I recently did a joint turbo session with Steve (housemate).
When I first wrote to Steve and Natalie via the internet about moving into
their house, I wrote a massive spiel about training, and bikes, and keeping the
bikes indoors under lock and key, and turbo training indoors. These are issues
that very few people have to worry about, and issues that probably don’t come
up very often in landlord-world. Steve and Natalie, being who they are and
doing what they do, understood all this bike and turbo trainer stuff perfectly,
and basically their reply to my original message was “welcome to our world, we
turbo train in the kitchen, when can you move in?!”
I’ve been almost two years in their house now (time flies)
and in those two years, I have seen Steve turbo training only a few times in
the kitchen. I have never seen Natalie turbo training in the kitchen. And I
have never turbo trained in the kitchen. I’ve always turbo trained in my room.
Anyway, one particular evening after work I said to Steve,
“Let’s do a turbo session together.” After a bit of persuasion and goading, he
agreed and we got the turbo trainers and bikes set up, side by side, in front
of the TV in the kitchen. No small job, with having to delicately manoeuvre my
triathlon bike and turbo trainer out of my room, across the landing, down the
stairs, through the hall and into the kitchen without so much as touching a
wall. This could be a Crystal Maze game…
I suggested we do a 30-minute double burn-off. Short and sweet.
I’ve done this session quite a few times in my room. You start off in the
lowest gear, spinning at about 120 watts (very easy). Then every minute, you
change into a higher gear, so it gets gradually and progressively tougher. After
ten minutes you are going at maybe 300 watts (hard enough). Then you drop into
an easier gear again for 5 minutes to allow yourself to recover. Then you go
onto the big front chainring, and go through the 10-minute cycle again, except
this time the ten-minute cycle starts at 200+ watts and ends at well over 400
watts (extremely hard, and even worse on a turbo trainer than out on the road). I’ve never been able to do the final minute of this session.
I’ve always had to have an easier minute before I hammer the final minute. It
is a tough, tough session, especially the last 5 minutes.
Twin turbos, ready to rock
I did a few stretches. We got changed into our cycling gear (in our separate rooms, we're not that close!) and I threw on a t-shirt to keep me warm before I started. We remembered to put
a fan in front of the bikes to try to keep us cool when pedalling hard. Then,
just before we were about to start, in walked Ian and his girlfriend Lorraine.
Ian moved into the house a couple of months ago. A young guy like us, chilled
out, everything you could want in a housemate. I had only met his girlfriend
briefly on a couple of occasions so can’t claim to know her too well, and she
probably wouldn’t claim to know us too well either.
Anyway, Ian and Lorraine were planning on making dinner (in
the kitchen, where the bikes were ready to go) and then obviously eating dinner
(in the kitchen, where the bikes were ready to go). Ian knows we train, and
he’s heard me on the bike in my room. I don’t know what he’d told Lorraine
about the house and housemates…
We just put the fan on full blast, jumped onto the bikes and
got going, and Lorraine was probably thinking, “What the heck sort of crackpot
house is this?!” Poor girl. I usually take my t-shirt off on the turbo but
decided maybe I’d keep it on this time around. And within a few minutes we were
hammering quite hard, breathing heavily, the turbos were humming away and I was
shouting out every minute to go up a level. Towels were on hand to periodically
mop up sweat. We got through the first ten minutes, and then eased off as
planned. Ian and Lorraine were by now sitting at the table, eating dinner. Maybe
they’d thought that they’d have a nice quiet dinner while watching Masterchef
or something. Instead they had a fine view of our two sweaty arses and
jackhammering legs.
The second ten minutes started. The tough ten minutes. After
5 or 6 minutes of gradually cranking it up, I was hitting my limit. There wasn’t
as much cooling as usual. In my room, the fan is right in my face and the
window is open. Here in the kitchen we were sharing a fan, there was no open
window, and I had a t-shirt on. Talk about hot and sweaty. Talk about a nice
quiet dinner in front of the TV. Talk about a bloody hard last couple of
minutes. I got 9 minutes into the final 10, and had to ease off again. By “ease
off”, I mean pretty much collapse gasping over the bike at 184 heartbeats per
minute with lactate burning my legs. Recovery…
60 seconds passed in what seemed like about 5 seconds (it’s
incomprehensible how time distorts when on the turbo trainer) and then I really
went for it for the final minute, absolutely maximal. Everything sounded like
it was just going to melt down, lift off, explode, or go on fire. The turbo
trainer was churning away, I was grunting and growling like a crazed animal,
and a nice quiet dinner was in progress literally just behind.
Session over. 5 or 10 minutes later I had cooled down and
calmed down enough to jump off the bike. So had Steve. “Hi Lorraine” we said, with
a sort of sheepishly satisfied post-exercise half-grin. Steve and I had some
water and bananas while standing dripping with sweat in our flattering little
lycra shorties, and we all had a bit of a chat as if this was the most normal
thing in the world. And to us, it is the most normal thing in the world.
I went and showered, and then got dinner. A day or two later
I got chatting to Ian. “I literally… could… not… believe… that the first time
you have Lorraine over for dinner is the first time Steve and I decide to turbo
train in the kitchen!” He just laughed. “We never turbo train in the kitchen,
I’ve been in this house nearly two years and I’ve never turbo trained in the
kitchen, and Steve has hardly ever turbo trained in the kitchen either, Natalie
has definitely never turbo trained in the kitchen…” He laughed again, and said
“No, no, no, don’t worry, really it wasn’t a problem…” I said, “Yeah, I know,
but the timing of it, she must have been wondering what the hell goes on in
this house!”
I said to Ian that if they had been back 20 or 30 minutes
earlier, we probably wouldn’t even have bothered with the joint kitchen turbo
session. I would have trained in my room and Steve wouldn’t have been too
disappointed either, given the persuasion that was necessary. But as it was, we were all set up and ready to go. “No, no, of
course you should have done it, we didn’t mind in the slightest.” Steve and I
knew deep down that they wouldn’t have minded, but it was just a funny sort of
situation.
Twin turbo-ing, with spectators dining 6 feet away. Surely this
doesn’t happen very often…?
No comments:
Post a Comment