Rolling rolling rolling

I rode ten miles yesterday and didn’t get anywhere. That’s probably about par for the course for me.

The temperature outside was a chilly 34 degrees, with the wind chill well down into the twenties. That’s the wind chill if you’re standing still, of course. If you’re a goofball on a bicycle, who knows how cold you’d get. I didn’t want to find out, so I decided to ride in my garage.

No, I’m not loony -

Oh. Wait. Yes I am.

But I’m not loony enough to just ride in tiny circles around the inside of my garage. Instead, I rode the rollers. (This may actually be worse than riding in tiny circles around the inside of my garage, since the second worst accident I ever had occurred while I was on the rollers, but I did it anyway.

I haven’t ridden the rollers in a while, but I hadn’t forgotten that disconcerting tendency the bike has to slide sideways and off the frame, with potentially bad results to various parts of my body. (We won’t even discuss what happened the very first time I ever rode the rollers, but it was particularly painful and would have been equally painful for about half of the population. We’ll leave it at that.)

The first few seconds on the rollers were a bit hectic, but things settled down after that. In fact, they settled down a bit too much and descended into boredom. That’s the problem with any sort of stationary bike. It’s booooooooooooring. Rollers are about the best of the bad lot, because, at least if you ride as clumsily as I do, you always have the specter of impending doom hanging over your head to give the ride a little added spice, but it’s still booooooooooooring,

I rode intervals to add a little interest, and I had a book on tape playing (one of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novels just in case you’re wondering), you can only look at the interior of a garage for so long before it begins to get…oh, what’s the word I’m looking for…oh yeah… booooooooooooring.

I stuck it out for ten miles, during which time I discovered that the garage was nowhere near as cold as I had thought it was. After about my second hard turn, it was really rather warm. During my third hard turn the bike considering slipping off of the rollers and dumping me onto the ground but kindly decided at the last instant not to do any of that. I was grateful.

I do plan to climb back onto the rollers this evening for another ten miles. Wish me luck with that. I’m hoping I can make myself do it. It felt better to get some miles than none, and the fact that it was actually a fairly hard workout made it even better, but no matter what I do, riding indoors is still…well…you know…

See you in the garage on the road.