Darkness arrives way to early at this time of the year, too early for cycling after work and departs too late to go in the morning before work. Thus I had the choice of hanging up my road bike and doing no exercise during the week or to continue the good work that I had done on the bike since starting road cycling in July. Of course I could have switched to running after work — and indeed I might do that as well — but I am obsessed about cycling and wanted to see what the Turbo Trainer had to offer! I have so far done four different sessions since starting last Tuesday, going every other day for 30mins+. The first session was the hardest because I didn’t know what I was letting myself in for, and I was training in front of one of The Sufferfest videos - supposed to be the hardest cycling workout videos on the market. Each week I will increase the duration by five minutes and see where that gets me, and each week I will train once to a sufferfest video to keep me extra motivated. Having no access to training books I am experimenting with what works best but always include a good warmup, and alternations between hard and medium with some recovery in between. I use my Garmin 405 to track my heartrate and plan to get a cadence attachment so I can measure how fast I am peddling (I’ve read that a cadence of 90-110 rpm is optimum). Hopefully there will be some weekends where I can go out riding where I will see how much effect this training is having, plus it will be great to taste the fresh country air again.