CompuTrainer

Well, for once in my life I had luck in my favor. I looked into purchasing a CompuTrainer this winter but ultimately decided to just get a PowerTap come Spring for cost reasons. I was randomly searching for an "around town" bike on Craiglist and happened upon a used CompuTrainer for a really good price. I called the guy and he offered to hold it for me while I verified through CompuTrainer that the device was functional and not an obsolete model. When I got confirmation, I snatched it up. The guy was even nice enough to hold it for me even though several others called him about it and asked to buy it.

I've ridden it a few times and already see that it's going to help me train smarter. I'm even considering doing one training session on it during the summer. I have a lot to work on when it comes to cycling so anything to help deliver improvement is up for consideration at this point. Given the circumstances, I feel like my procurement of the CompuTrainer was meant to be. Hopefully I'll be sharing some workouts and progress as the winter progresses.

Winter

Just a quick update on the Winter progress so far. I took a few weeks of active rest after Tuscaloosa and spent most of October/November doing singles. My big focus of the winter is cycling. I cleaned up my dirty, unfinished basement and set up a TV with surround sound and have been jamming away down there more than any winter prior. I've almost exhausted all of the good movies from the Cleveland Heights library so I'm digging into Adriane's collection.

I spent a lot of time in the pool last winter and while my yardage is nowhere near last year's, I still feel pretty strong in the pool. Right now I'm doing 3 swims, 3-4 rides, and 3-4 runs per week. Last week was 7 hours on the trainer, 35 miles running, and 3 hours in the pool (shortened pool schedules due to holidays screwed up my schedule a bit). I also picked up Sheila Taormina's "Call the Suit" and have been focusing on my swimming technique. It's an easy read and I'm definitely noticing that I'm getting stronger and have a better feel for the water. I highly recommend it. On the running front, I've not done anything too hard. My long runs have been consistently between 12 and 14 miles for the last 2 months and I have a great group for long runs on Saturday mornings. So I guess the last 4th quarter of 2010 was consistent but not strenuous. Now that we're entering the first quarter of 2011, it's ready to ramp things up and really hit the training hard.