I used to be an absolute fiend for the turbo as a younger man. I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it though. I was at quite an unhappy point of my life; after university, trying to find my feet as an adult, a little lonely, struggling with some obsessive weight control, and relatively new to cycling. I’d started racing cyclocross with my local club, and so as each winter rolled around I’d dig out an old, cheap magnetic trainer, fit a turbo tyre to a spare wheel and do an hour of intervals four or five nights a week after work.
I had no concept of training properly then. More riding = more fast. Harder = better. Active recovery? Never heard of him. One of the first things I wrote after joining Cyclingnews was a piece on my relationship with cycling and eating disorders, which is worth a read for a bit of context. The short version though is that I used the turbo as a stick to beat myself with for a long time, alone in a basement flat in Leeds. It was something, along with my body weight, that I could control. I was fresh out of university, was never in a position to buy a power meter, and to be honest despite having a heart rate monitor I never really put the time in to learn about training with it properly. I’d just run myself ragged staring at a stopwatch.
