February’s Winter Trainer Love, Hate, and Glorious Suffering Blog

February can be a rather depressing and boring month when you are trying to ride outside. Unfortunately, Mother Nature has other ideas. This mostly applies to those like me who own but one bike, and it is a 100% road bike for paved roads. So, then we have the dreaded trainer to aid in our, umm, relief by connecting your bike to this beast and spinning aimlessly till the snow melts. Sound familiar friends!? 

OK, so some back history on my trainer love/hate relationship when we used to go to the Mecca of spinning dens in Golden run by a world famous bad-ass named Megan. We would show up every Saturday morning in the winter and some Wednesday evenings to be lulled into a nice warm-up and then told to spin till we bake forever. There was quite the following for many years to this den of sweat, smiles, sometimes cookies, and decent views out the windows. This definitely grew my love for riding even more. Thank you Megan.

Now, back to this month, February 2020, and what I do for cycling promotion, encouragement, commuting (not so much) and the love of riding. The highlight of this month is always the virtual tour of a mythical nation that is nine days long. Yes, nine consecutive days on your trainer with a couple thousand other friends from around the world. Why you ask would anyone want to subject themselves to this type of insanity? Well I shall tell you why as best I can. The name of this tour is The Tour of Sufferlandria (TOS) and is based in our mythical nation of Agonia (no one knows where this actually is), somewhere in the highest mountain range, so the suffering is glorious. We do this tour to raise money for the Davis Phinney Foundation. Their mission is to make the lives of those with Parkinson's disease more livable and normal. This year, we raised close to $225,000 for the foundation. The tour is very hard and requires a lot of planning. Some stages are two to three hours long. I have met so many great people virtually and in person over the years and encouraged them to improve on the bike as they have encouraged me. Every day, we post our glorious suffering results, pics only no data of the ride. Then we encourage and heckle everyone else till the next day's stage.

Throughout the year, many Sufferlandrians use the Sufferfest App to train both indoors and outdoors for races they have their sights on for months. But really, the main focus for all of us is the TOS. The tour is different every year. In the stages' videos, we are challenged to complete within a global 50 hour window for each stage. This year was probably the toughest of the seven tours I have done, having a mixture of sprint, time trial, and climbing workouts.

This tour is also a great springboard for many of us to get into shape for the upcoming outdoor season of commuting, riding, and racing. No one likes to hit spring time up 10-15 lbs. or worse. Right!? 

After the tour is complete, rest and recovery are the keys, then back on the trainer till spring arrives and Mother Nature will allow us to ride outside on our awesome road bikes. Throughout this month, and especially during the tour, positive posts of why we ride, how we ride, or equipment and attack plans are critical to all. This is how we grow our cycling community both indoors and outdoors. Always be looking for ways to encourage those who are new to riding and to those who may be a tad burned out from riding. #ridemoredriveless

This is my February on the bike as an Ambassador.

Gerry Stephenson (GJStache53)