A New Trainer and some advice from 'The Butcher'

I have set up my old Raleigh Pioneer bike up on an indoor trainer, ideal for the dark cold nights. I managed to spend a bit of time this week giving it a go, but how to get started......

Tim, known as... 'The Butcher' (N.B. All great cyclists have nicknames, Eddy Merckx was the 'Cannibal, Fabian Cancellara is 'Spartacus') advised me to fit an old bike to the trainer, set the resistance of the trainer to low and use the gears on the bike to generate the resistance and finally most important of all, get a heart rate monitor !!!

The way I did it, a bit like a bull at a gate ! Most important of all, get my Ipod and get an appropriate playlist. Sort out a stop watch and get started. A short easy spinning warm up then into the 20 minute routine... 30 seconds fast spinning... 30 seconds slower... repeat a number of times.... then repeat the lot with higher resistances. Not exactly scientific but I felt that I had a good workout at the end of it.

The playlist, Radar Love - Golden Earring, Silver Machine - Hawkwind, Born to be Wild - Steppenwolf, On the Road Again - Canned Heat. I laughed when I realised that the old Raleigh Pioneer was a silver machine, not quite the same as the one in the song. No wonder my legs were plaiting at the end and I thought my body had sprung a leak !!!!!