Bike riding with Dr. Phil

So, today I get a bit crazy and decide that even though my "non-existent off-season" schedule called for today to be my day off (again) – I was going to sneak in a 30 minute bike ride on the trainer. This in spite of the fact that my every other day 4 mile run has totally taxed my body, I was up for the challenge.

I setup the bike and the trainer in front of the TV and flipped on Dr. Phil. Takes me about 5-10 minutes just to get my stuff organized and to try on my new IronMan Wisconsin tri-shorts (should make me much faster). I then needed to show my 9 year old my virtual head to toe IronMan gear that I’ll be wearing in the house on my ride. My 9 year old, trying to be nice, asks if I got all that stuff free for finishing the IronMan – well, I didn’t have the heart to tell him that it wasn’t free and hopefully he likes his school shoes for the rest of the school year.

Once on the bike, I get into the aero position and start my cadence around 90 – this lasts until I hear Dr. Phil mention that the 18 year old guests had two children already and were married – at that point I needed to get out of the aero position and listen up.

I had planned on a nice 30 minute bike ride, but around 12 minutes into the ride it seemed like I had been going for some time. I just kept on going telling myself to at least get to the next commercial break. Well, that worked and I made it to around 16 minutes into my “un-scheduled totally un-necessary hopefully do not get injured from the over-training” bike ride – at that point I needed a new goal and I went for the "at least until Dr. Phil tells them for the 100th time that they made a mistake having kids so young" (ya think?).

That got me to around 22 minutes, now I’m starting to try and figure out reasons to end this ride sooner than later – did I hear the door bell – nope, do I need to change the channel so I don’t miss Oprah – nope, is my chain properly lubed – yep, am I starting to get dehydrated – nope, and on and on. Thankfully, that got me to around 25 minutes – now just 5 minutes to go – at this point I figure I can always down shift and spin my way to the FULL 30 minutes. So I just kept spinning watching Dr. Phil pound on these young kids with even younger children. Finally I made it – 30 Freakin minutes – and you know what – I could have run at least 10 minutes or so once I got off of that bike.

So what did I learn from doing my "un-scheduled over-training off-season" bike ride – If you have children at a young age, go on Dr. Phil and he’ll get you free help.

Gotta love/hate this off-season training…