Wintertime is approaching Compurtrainer Time is Coming

The wife and I headed out to Kinesic Sport Lab last night for a Computrainer session. Many of you have heard of Computrainers and many have even ridden them, but for those not in the now here's a brief run down.

A Computrainer is an indoor bike trainer that lets you hook you regular bike up and use it as an indoor exercise bike. That's the simple. But the Computrainer is so much more. With all of its attachments, you get an indoor bike that can be programmed to follow a predetermined course, even following the profile of real bike races or triathlon routes. The trainer itself will adjust to make things easier or more difficult depending on whether or not you are going up or downhill. It can keep track of your cadence, speed, distance, watts and even heart rate if you wear a monitor.

So okay, the Computrainer is a cool tool, but what about a class? Well at Kinesic, they have 8 Computrainers setup and a big overhead projector.  What that means is you get to have fun and compete against other riders. Enter you info into the system and it adjusts to your riding needs. Then go!

Here we are getting set up 

Coach JZ adjusting fans and explaining our route

Our warmup consisted of getting our cadence up, some one legged drills and getting our hearts beating and ready to go for the main event. The main event being a 14.13 km moderately hilly time trial. 

While, yes, the Computrainer is a great tool to get fit and healthy, it is also a must go to tool for training for longer distance triathlons in a cold weather climate. From getting to ride the actual course profile of your upcoming races (it has many to choose from) to learning how to properly pace over the distance, this system offers huge benefits. It also makes you sweat (hence the big fans) and your legs burn, but that's all good.

The four of us in the class last night had a blast. If you haven't tried it and are curious, Kinesic offers drop ins when a class isn't full ahead of time. They also offer 8 weeks courses from base training to FTP from Hell session (if you don't know what FTP is the Coach will explain it in the course he's good like that). 

After the session and you legs are dead an email gets sent to you asap with a ton of awesome info about the ride:

That's the quick summary, the email has a link to way more info. But it gives you a great quick view of the ride.  It also makes it much easier to add to your current logging system for workouts. 

Anyway enough of that. If you live in Halifax, Kinesic is the place to head for a group session. You can buy your own Computrainer as well or other varieties with similar features, though I will attest to the fact that you won't push nearly as hard on the bike alone as you will trying to edge passed the guy riding next to you. Have fun and get ready for winter!