Benchmarking - 10km trainer ITT

So the rain has continued to bucket down in Brisbane. After resisting for quite a while, I finally broke and dragged out the magtrainer for an indoor session before my legs forget what cycling is like.

One of the problems I find with using the trainer is I'm not really sure what to do, and I subsequently find it all a bit boring and aimless.  After mulling over a few options, I decided the best thing to do would be a 10km time-trial, as fast as I could.  This would give me two outcomes - a short but hard workout, plus a 'benchmark' I can use to track my progress in future months.

After setting up my bike on the trainer, getting the pedestal fan aiming at my head and torso, opening up all the windows in the spare room (where I was set up), and filling my water bottle with cold water - I was ready to go.

I started off with an easy 10 minute warm up to get my legs ready for the effort ahead. During the warm-up, my radio station of choice (Triple J) moved on to their 'heavy metal' program. Now that might seem ideal for a flat out ITT, but it wasn't doing it for me - onto Nova instead...

So I reset my bike computer, and launched into my 10km of pain!!  Probably the hardest thing was pacing - I spent a fair bit of time flicking between two rear cogs, trying to work out which I preferred (still undecided!). Plus I was worried about going out way too fast and blowing up in the last few kilometres.

Halfway through, I hit my only hurdle - I was sweating like crazy, but had nothing to wipe my face with!! Luckily, my 10yo daughter came wandering in to see what I was doing. "Can you get Dad a towel, sweetheart?" I gasped...  She ran off and appeared 30sec later with a fluffy towel for me - thanks Emma!!

Finally I reached the last kilometre, and pushed through it in the hardest of the two gears I was using. I kept telling myself it was less than a lap of Murarrie crit circuit to go...

Very relieved to get to the end, I clicked my bike computer over to the time - 22min 26sec.  Not bad for my first 'benchmarking' effort.

I'm not particularly worried about the actual time it took. There are too many variables in play to compare it to an actual onroad effort. The key thing will be comparing it to future efforts, and seeing how I can bring that time down.

I'm still not a fan of the trainer (who is?!), but at least now I have a good reason for dragging it out and knocking out a hard effort!!