Testing

So yesterday I had to do a power test.  You know, baseline for the start of the season and all that.  8 minutes as hard as you can go, on the trainer.  Everything about it is pretty unpleasant. 

The process, for me, began with getting my road bike up and running.  I needed my big ring, otherwise I end up spun out on my trainer pretty fast.  An hour of work got it to the patented Marian "good enough" stage.  Bike set upon the trainer, big fan pointed right at my face, get-pumped playlist on, and I even ate a Gu shot.  Yeah, a Gu shot, not for a bike race.  For an hour on the trainer.  Blech.  Started warming up.  Heart rate isn't getting picked up by my computer.  Hmm...  needs a new battery?  I opened it up and, lo and behold, it had no battery in it.  Poached for some other bike-related computer electronic device?  Undoubtedly.  Cool, easy fix.  For once in my life I actually had a 2032 battery sitting around and didn't have to run out to buy one.  Okay, back on the bike, I started my warm-up.  After approximately 4 minutes of easy spinning there was a clunk noise followed by a whole lot of nasty metal-on-metal grinding.  My trainer, that has been slowly disintegrating for the past several years but I've put off replacing because riding-the-trainer-sucks-and-who-wants-to-drop-$200-on-that-shit-anyways, died.  RIP.  It's probably for the best.  But I still had a ride to do. 

So I loaded up the bike and drove to the shop to use the trainer sitting in the fit studio.  Their super nice fluid trainer is a lot nicer than my erstwhile Blackburn mag, and the resistance is high enough that I probably could have put off my morning of bike maintenance for another month.  C'est la vie.  At this point it had been 40 minutes since I'd eaten my Gu shot so I ate another Gu shot.  Yes.  2 in one non-race day.  What is wrong with me?!  Anyway, I've been off the coffee for a couple days now and both Gus had caffeine in them so my heart rate was instantly through the roof.  Long story short, I finished warm-up, buried myself in 8 minutes in hell, cooled down and went home to look at my power file. 

You know what's worse than all that stupid time-wasting crap that I went through to get those numbers?  Going through it all and having those numbers suck.  But that's bike racing.  Or training.  Or trainer power testing, at any rate. 

Sorry, that was 5 minutes of your life you'll probably never get back.