Equipment. Last year in a fit of enthusiasm I bought an Elite Realaxiom turbo trainer. Having set it up and played with it for a while, my laptop then gave up the ghost and had to go for repair. For those who don't know, the Realaxiom needs to be controlled by a PC. By the time the laptop came back 3 weeks later, I'd lost interest amidst work pressures. It's perfect for my needs now, though. Set up in the garage with my old end to end bike installed, I've been able to do two training sessions so far.
I researched pretty thoroughly before settling on Realaxiom, and thought long and hard about Tacx. I didn't know then that Realaxiom doesn't integrate with Training Peaks, but for my purposes that hardly matters. There's a number of useful features it does have though. The best of these is the springy feet, which you set up according to your mass. This allows the bike to move slightly beneath you as you pedal, which makes it feel more like you are on a bike than the usual rigid and unforgiving turbo trainer experience.
The idea of the Realaxiom is that you play a DVD of an actual piece of road, which is filmed from the rider's point of view, and this advances at the speed you are 'riding' at with resistance changing automatically to match the gradient. This works well against the boredom factor! You can also set up programs and I've dabbled with Power vs Distance today. 10 miles at 125 watts actually, which is not that much but all I could manage. 18 miles covered so far.
Time to have a look through my cycling clothes. Hmmm, the curse of the conditioner has been visited on some of the lycra items, particularly shorts (which stretched and went baggy when tested) so they go in the bin with a batch of droopy socks. Baselayers are still OK but they've been christened 'wife-beaters' by the missus so it all needs an overhaul.
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