Winter training

[coolboarder]

There's no right or wrong here. On magnetic turbos you need resistance to increase effort, on fluid turbos it is not as important - the faster you spin it the harder the resistance so Greg is right, put the bike in a higher gear and maintain the same cadence and it gets harder. Mine fluid turbo doesn't have anything to increase resistance (it doesn't need it in a high gear at 100 rpm its as hard as I can physically manage), my previous magnetic one did and guess what - the lever and cable broke! Re the OP, I think you will get very bored and disillusioned if you use a turbo for base training, after half an hour I'm ready to hang myself from a beam in the garage! I was (well still am although they've grown up now) a father of 2 girls who works 11-12 hours a day and I still found time to train early in the morning or late at night, if you can find 2 hours for a turbo you can find 2 hours for the road. Also don't forget the benefits of cross training for maintaining cardiovascular fitness and leave long bike rides until the spring. If its dark and cold go for a run, an hour running is worth 3 hours cycling for the same amount of effort.

[timothy.john]

More ST references, please Use your weekly road ride for endurance, Goonad, and your time on the turbo for intervals. A mix of the two will get your winter training off to a fine start. If your weekly road ride is on a Sunday, there's a good chance your local club will be starting reliability rides soon. Worth checking out, I'd say.