Well - I think I mentioned it before, but I had a bit of a windfall - last year I had what I considered a "deadbeat" client - stiffed me for best part of £2000 worth of work. Now, as it was all my time and labour, rather than anything contracted out, or goods supplied, I pretty much wrote it off at the end of the year... 3 weeks ago, comes a remitance advice in the post, informing me that the sum had been paid in full, direct into my bank, with a real nice letter thanking me for my patience, and explaining that my not chasing for the money, was pretty much the only thing that had saved the guy's company from going bankrupt!

Anyway - after advice from my accountant, I put the taxmans share away, bought christmas presents for the rest of the family, and decided that the best present I could get myself was something that would help me get properly fit. I'm still too fat and unfit to be spending money on a flashy bike, I'm losing weight too quickly to spend money on clothes, so, the logical thing seemed to be to get something that could keep me on the bike even if there's snow on the ground for a couple of months again this year!

I'm looking forward - if that's the right term - to having a crack at some of the Real-Life Videos for the Tacx - may even get the chance to climb the Alpe-D'Huez in the comfort of my own home...

just to put things in scale though - my best upgrade on the bike this week has been the purchase of a pack of neodymium magnets - 10mm x 1mm - just small enough that one will stick to the back of the pedal spindle. That way I can loose the big clunky magnet on the pedal crank that operated the garmin's cadence sensor. Total expenditure £2.99 for a pack of 20 of the little blighters :laugh:

well - the 1mm ones work well with my setup - which is Ultegra cranks and Pedals - the 1mm magnet sticks to the pedal spindle at the back, and pretty much comes flush to the level of the crank. My reasoning for going with the 1mm's was, if one wasn't enough, I'd stick 2-3 back to back until it worked... though in fairness, one of the lads at the LBS (local bike shop) had already done this trick, and said one magnet was plenty :laugh:

When I get down to my target weight, I'll be happily ordering the Carbon DeRosa and all the Campag Record trimmings, but at the moment, the extra 5lb of bike makes very little difference in the bigger scheme of things.

Well - one of the better budget end turbo trainers is the Tacx Speedmatic - it's been pretty well reviewed in a few of the UK and european bike magazines. Solid build and reasonably quiet, 10 resistance levels you can select on the resitance brake (plus you can obviously use the gears on the bike to make it easier/harder) It's also got a reasonable size of flywheel effect, to smooth out your pedalling a bit - like your momentum does on the road - and it rolls down for a fair while - 17 seconds from full sprint in the bike test I'm looking at now - which again is good - theres nothing worse on a turbo trainer than it stopping 2 seconds after you stop pedalling - at least a 17 second roll-down will allow you to sit up, wipe your face, and grab a swig from the bottle, before getting back to pedalling again. :laugh:

On a slightly higher budget the Kurt Kinetic's are pretty popular too, but anymore money and you're into the realms of silly setups like mine - a complete and admitted indulgeance - but what the hell - i've lost 70lb in the last 4 months and I felt like treating myself!!!

One more thing - don't forget to budget for a proper trainer tyre - they're a harder, more heat resistant compound than road tyres and you WILL fry normal road tyres in a matter of a few sessions. Oh - and DON'T ride the trainer tyre on the road either, or you'll fall off and break something. If you're going to set up the trainer in a normal room, you may also want to consider a trainer mat to go under the trainer and bike, to prevent spoiling your floors/carpet with flecks of rubber from the tyre / dust-dirt from the bike/ pools of sweat dripping from you...

My advice would be to try and borrow a trainer from someone, just to see if you get on with it - if you do - fine - buy a good one, and get those miles in. If you don't - well - you could always spend the money you save on some spinning classes...

It's definitely not like riding on the road, in some ways it's a LOT harder - mentally tough to do anything more than a hour on one of them - and physically, as you really do not stop pedalling for the duration you're on the trainer - unless you spend £1000's on one of the motorised ones that will actually "freewheel" you donwn the hills... why you'd want to do this I'm not sure tbh - if the trainers "doing the pedalling" you're just sitting there - and I'd far sooner be sat in a comfortable chair, than perched on my bike with the sweat drying on me. I certainly have no qualms about booking my mileage and calorie burns on the trainer - if anything my Garmin reckons that mile for mile, I probably burn 10-15% MORE on the trainer than out on the road - and that's with the old trainer setup, before this fancy current one :laugh:

main reason I said to use a trainer specific tyre was what happened when I used a old Michelin Pro-Race 3 on my previous trainer - a Cateye CS1000 - about 10k into a workout, the ride felt a little "bumpy" - I stopped and checked, and the tread was coming off the carcass like a snake shedding it's skin... fair enough, it was an old-ish tyre - probably had 2k on the road wear, and they are lightweight race tyres, but for the cost of a trainer tyre, I'd sooner not risk it.

That's one of the reasons I bought the setup in the original post - can't handle just grinding out miles in a airless room working to a schedule on a clipboard. I find it far more motivating to spend a hour doing hill intervals chasing Robert Gessink and Denis Menchov up the side of a mountain in spain... Of course the slightly demoralising bit is because you're watching a video, you never actually catch them, but hey - i've never caught anybody on a proper uphill in my life anyway, so I'm used to that :laugh:

WOW......that sounds like quite the set up, you need to put up a picture once the whole setup is good to go.

I am suck with a stationary mag trainer or rollers in the garage with the door open and some music.

:laugh: all there is to see is a blank white wall and a posh turbo-trainer pointing at it... It may sound a bit over the top, but to be honest, I'm using a old laptop machine that's been upgraded from, and a portable video projector, that I used to use when I was out on the road delivering training. The rest of it is pretty much down to not having a partner to complain at me that i've taken over the garage with all my stuff and they can't park their car in there :laugh:

In fairness - the garage has been more of a workshop / darkroom / photo studio / bike storage area rather than somewhere for the car to live since I moved in here.

Only real extravagant part was the purchase of the Bushido, rather than one of the simpler bits of kit, but I just KNOW that without something extra to motivate me, if we get another 2 months of snow/icy roads this year like last year, I'm going to veg out, and start putting weight back on again - and that CAN NOT HAPPEN!!!

I finally have my trainer set up and rode a while last night. I know to be effective, I need a training video but there are so many! I have been looking at a lot of them but I have no idea which one to try. They are more expensive than regular workout dvd's so I really don't want to buy one just to find out it sucks. Any more recommendations?

It might be easier for people to recommend something if you could give some Idea of what kind of workouts you're looking for - are you looking for something that's high intensity intervals - or something that's good to pass a couple of hours of base level tempo riding - or do you really want to work on climbing power - or - something that's good for all that...

Have a look on http://www.turbotraining.co.uk/ - there are loads of different training plans, for specific types of workouts, and a "player" that will tell you how hard you should be going, what gear/resistance/pulse rate/power outputs etc.

If your doing a short, high intensity workout, you don't necessarily need a video - you'll probably going too hard to see the screen clearly anyway... Fancy rigs like mine tend to come into their own if you're stuck riding the trainer for 2 months due to the weather.