MOTHERING SUNDAE: My turbo-training reaches top speed (From Oxford Mail)
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MOTHERING SUNDAE: My turbo-training reaches top speed
10:00am Monday 7th May 2012 in Columns By Esther Browning
This week I’ve been turbo-training. This may sound like a super fuel injection boasting the power of a V8 engine, but it’s actually more mechanical and a lot less speedy.
A turbo trainer is a contraption that you use to turn an outside bike into indoor exercise equipment. The bike came with one, and it remained unloved in the garage ever since without any effect on my gluteus maximus.
The instructions on adding the bike were short but made as much sense to me as a doctorate in tropical fish care written in Korean.
However, with the battering inclemency howling round the house’s perimeter, and the Parisian pedal challenge looming closer, I overcame 18 months of procrastination to avoid being knocked off my bike by a windswept fence panel.
The set-up took longer than a marathon, involved unimaginable tools and was a true test of family bonding akin to The Krypton Factor without the matching tracksuits.
The middle one, however, was appalled that after years of being greeted lovingly at the front door with “take your shoes off on the mat”, I’d knowingly brought muddy metalwork into the front room.
The glistening-skinned wrestling image that flashed through your head (come on, admit it) is closer to the truth than I’d like to admit, but I finally reached a high-glow and build-completion and was out for the count.
Once I’d had time to recuperate, the view from my saddle was radically different from previous rides.
Against an interior design backdrop, I can now spend the afternoon racing against Formula 1 cars on a Scalextric track or flying through a Star Wars universe constructed from Lego.
And then in the evening what could be better than to pedal sleeping children over to Downton Abbey via Big Fat Gypsy Weddings with, all the while, a glass of chilled white cleverly positioned within arm’s reach on the mantelpiece. There’s something to be said for turbo training after all.
