Roll Your Own

It's seven degrees outside.

I'm getting on my rollers.

What more is there to say?

Okay, okay, here's a Scooby snack for a chill winter's morning: Go here for some decent twists on the roller/trainer workout.

I hereby solicit you to post your own variations in the comments section.

Roll On

I find it interesting how hard it is for me to ride the new Cannondale on my rollers. I'd gotten so used to riding the rollers on my Giant by this, my second winter on rollers, that I was able to watch a few movies, change settings on my iPod, grab a tissue and blow my nose, take drinks of water, and even completely zone out for a while. (I know: Not the point of rollers.)

Yesterday was my first extended roller session with the 'Dale, and I had to keep alert nearly every minute. I think the effects of the tighter, more responsive frame geometry are amplified by the rollers, which themselves make any bike respond to every muscle twitch.

I'm wondering if mastering the R1000 on the rollers will lead to greater (or faster) mastery of it on the road. Probably contributes at least a little.

Hands Off

Yeah, yeah, yeah: Riding rollers is boring. Right. I've been complaining about it since November.

But today, I'm not complaining. In fact, I'm stoked.

Because today, I did 2 x 30 sec on the rollers.... NO HANDS.

That's right, Velophoriacs.You read right. (Buffing fingernails on shirtfront.) Rollers with no hands, for half a minute -- twice. I could have gone a lot longer, but I was doing intervals today and didn't want to mess with my heart rate. I did, however, whoop with joy. I know people who've been cycling for decades and still can't take one hand off the bars while on rollers.

I hope you won't think less of me for bragging. Given that my training and racing plans have been sabotaged lately by a cold, the miserable weather, and general life stress, I kinda feel like celebrating this little triumph. I'm not sayin' I'm a "hard man," or equating myself with a pro cyclist. I'm just sayin' I can now do one thing that those people do. Which is cool!

I guess it's the old "Look ma, no hands!"

I once saw a video of Lance Armstrong taking his jacket off while on the rollers. It looked disgustingly easy for him, so commonplace that he didn't even bother to try looking casual about it. And I thought, "Well, I'll never do that." Today, it doesn't look so far off.

Now I call that a souplesse surplus.

First Quadrennial Inaugural Ride'n'Sweat

If you look closely, you can see the computer monitor streaming live video of the coronation proceedings on Tuesday. Had Velophoriana been home, I'd have had her take a picture with me on the bike, but this is all I got for ya. I had a blast watching, and you better believe I sprinted like Eric Zabel when O. took the stage. I whooped for joy.

I suppose that's the first time I've tipped my political hand here on Velophoria, but, I mean, c'mon. I live in the Pioneer Valley, one of the more liberal corners of an already liberal state. (And, if you're a sometime political junkie like me, you'll enjoy that link I just provided.)

Torture Room Less Torturous

This...

...leads to this.

Above, you see version 2.0 of MIMIC: The Meteorologically Immune Musculocardiorespiratory Improvement Center.

Okay, okay, it's our study. But the good news this year is that, having moved our butts all the way out to Western Mass, we're currently living in an apartment with no basement. The reason that's good news is that it means I don't have to ride the rollers in the basement. The missus gave me permission to ride upstairs, in the large, airy room that also holds our desks and a couple clothes closets.

I already spend way too much time in this room, because it's where I keep my stretching and physical therapy tools -- a big plastic bin filled with foam rollers (ouch!), yoga mat, tennis balls of all sizes (used for rolling, like the foam rollers -- again, ouch!), playground balls for doing wall slides, the shorter version of The Stick, and so on and so forth. Because of my IT band issues, I already stretch, foam-roll or otherwise torture myself in there at least twice a day. Now that Old Man Winter's arrived, I also spend some number of hours in there each week goin' round and round on the roller-thingies. No matter how miserable I get doing mile after mile (and -- as the saying goes -- not getting any closer to the wall), I try to remind myself how much better my current roller set-up is than last year.

• I have two big windows. (I had one tiny one, far away, last year.)
• I have a TV with a VCR built-in. (I only had my iPod last year.) (And I'm now interested in trading with anyone who has VHS tapes of cycling races, endurance sport movies, etc. Just post a comment.)
• I have a comfortable, relatively bright, attractive room. (The basement was dark and dank, nothing but old cement everywhere.)
• I don't have to clonk down two flights of stairs in my cleats and kit to start riding (and then realize I forgot something and clonk back up, and back down -- ad infinitum. On one of those trips, my cycling shoes were guaranteed to slip on the carpeted stairs and I'd go flying). I just walk in the room and hop on.
• And get this: The bathroom is right across the hall. Woohoo for the small luxuries!

Let us now praise indoor riding! (OK, let us at least be less grumpy about it.)

Rollers and Souplesse

My friend Luke posted some very interesting comments to my recent post about rollers. He writes:

I've heard one can get a better workout on a trainer by doing intervals w/varying degrees of resistance. But I like my rollers, if for nothing more then to say that I can ride them. And that must count for something.

Indeed. It’s amusing to hear riders from beginner to “beyond category” smoothly slip references to their rollers into their forum posts and conversations. I bought rollers instead of a trainer last fall for two simple reasons: 1) My fitter told me they would make my legs learn better form (when used with a modicum of consciousness); and 2) I couldn’t afford a good fluid trainer, and wasn’t interested in the magnetic or wind trainers. (Rollers cost less than trainers.)

Yet often, when I mention them, I get more credit for being old-school and authentically souplesse-oriented, than I ever expected. I thought they were the poor man’s trainer, but no, my friend. No. It seems that, in the road cycling ethos, one gets credit for building smoothness and economy into one’s form, especially if it involves 100-year-old technology. (Rollers haven’t changed much since the turn of the 20th century.) This is one of the reasons I love being a roadie: That whole old-world, European belief that beauty comes first, and from it flows all other important things. Things like speed, for instance.

I do think the rollers have made me a better rider than I would have been had I just hammered on a trainer last winter. “Better” in both tangible and esthetic ways: My pedal stroke is smoother, rounder, and more efficient. It uses more of the muscles in my core. But I am also more still on the bike. I have a long way to go in this department, but I love what little I have learned so far.

This stillness is the very first thing you notice about a dangerous rider. Even from a distance, you can tell if a cyclist has it. If so, I know there is power under the hood that you had best respect. It’s a deceptively lazy-looking grace. Everywhere above the waist, you’ll find a kind of lank ease that you can’t quite put your finger on. The lines are smooth. Arms curve slightly on the way to the bars. Spine curves upward and gently forward. The shoulders are relaxed and back. The face is calm. There is no rocking side to side, no strain showing anywhere. Below the waist, the legs turn simply and powerfully, neither flailing nor slowly grinding.

If you’re not looking closely, you’d never know there was effort involved. Don’t be fooled; nothing is wasted. If you dialed it up to pass him from behind, he would toast you in about 300 yards, and, curse him, he would still look like a ballet dancer relaxing on a divan.

More about rollers anon. I’ve got lots of time right now to think about them. If you go ahead and post some comments listing your favorite ways to keep roller riding interesting, I’ll try to incorporate it all. Let's all work together to make base period a little more communal and fun, eh?

Rollerized

Yeah, it's that time of year again:



I don't always look that dazed on the rollers; I think that picture was probably taken in deep February ('08), which would mean two months of mostly indoor riding, hearing the same voices talk about the same topics on the same podcasts over and over and...

I'm lucky this year; our new house has no basement to ride in, so my wonderful wife allows me to ride in our study, where I can look out the window. And I can ride outside down to about freezing (after that, my knees and IT band rebel, no matter what clothing solutions I try), so I've managed to be on the road for at least one ride every week so far this fall, and sometimes more.

Even so, it's only mid-December, and I'm already turned off to the rollers; that can't mean good things for my training hours during base period.

I'd love to hear from someone out there who truly loves riding indoors. That would be a different perspective, eh? How many other bike blogs out there have posts right now that are singing the same plaintive song as mine?

Most of 'em. Most of 'em.