Notes from the Winter training bunker: Snow means winter means anintroduction to the training bunker

The first snowfall serves as a nasty reminder. Not that winter is here, that I need to get the snow tires on the car, or that the winter coat will take pride of place in the closet for the foreseeable future, but that winter training is now, finally, upon me.

I’ve spent the past three months being pathetically lazy, falling into that trap, or should I say catching that bug known as bone-idleness. Following my final mountain bike race of the year which marked possibly the fittest I had been in some years after a solid couple of months worth of riding, I went out just once in September after moving to our new house. Various things got in the way and the time moved fast as it always does now, but mostly it was just that bone-idle bug.

A few weeks ago I got myself a turbo trainer. Actually it was a Christmas present, one that I demanded be opened before Christmas so I could maximize its use before the spring arrived. So it would do a great disservice to those that got it for me if I continued to sit around doing nothing. And I must say, I’ve made a good go of doing just that in the two weeks since buying it, setting it up and getting the bike ready to go. I like to blame it on being ill for a few days, on spending time getting the Christmas tree up, the outside lights done, but the fact is that a major side effect of the bone-idleness disease is the wish to come home after a long day at work and plonk yourself onto the couch for the remainder of the evening -- or at least for as much as a twenty month old daughter will allow. And, for honesty sake, not even being busy with a child is a complete excuse (though it is on quite a few days, if I’m totally fair to myself), because there’s still time to do something after she has fallen asleep rather than opening a beer, eating some junk food and watching another hockey game on the tele.

The turbo might as well be wrapped up under the tree as things stand.



That has to change. If I carry this into another month I’ll find myself on Christmas morning, before I know it, munching my Turkey and telling myself that come January I’ll get to training. I did that last year and swore (as I did the year before that, to be fair) that next year I’d ride until the first snow fall and then after a week or two off, retreat to our unfinished basement to maintain and build on my fitness. Now, I’m saying that next year, I swear to do just that.

But, three months of little to nothing aside, I’ve still got some good time to build back a layer of fitness from what has become, once again, ground zero. So tonight, as the temperature hovers somewhere around ten below zero meaning no chance of a ride on the roads – those days are long gone and advantage of them was not taken when the chance was there these past months -- I’ll descent the twelve or so steps below ground -- into my training bunker as it is now to be known – and sling my leg over the saddle (if indeed I remember how to) and start the dreaded winter training program.