A few years back, I really needed to take my bike to the next level.  Living in Colorado and heading into the winter months, the climate didn’t really provide the best cycling weather in the winter.  Because of my commitment to becoming a better athlete, I decided I needed to mentally wrap myself around this idea of cycling indoors.  Well, I did just that and committed to remaining diligent.  After a couple of weeks, I made a few discoveries.  First of all, I quickly realized that holding watts indoors seemed to be much harder than outdoors.  Also, not a whole lot of opportunity for coasting or stop lights ;-)  The biggest discovery I made… was how dang hard it was to stay on the bike for hours at a time!  This is when I realized… that many won’t do what I was doing for sanity reasons.  This is when I came up with my motto… Trainer = Opportunity.  I had the opportunity to make great gains on the bike, when others wouldn’t be as diligent.

Well, this morning I had a another opportunity to put things in perspective.  As I am well into my training for Clearwater, I woke up with two sick kiddo’s.  Leaving for Kona in the morning, this would be my last chance for a long ride for over a week. Regardless, I just couldn’t bare to leave them, obviously.  So as I pulled out the trainer, I got real grumpy. “I can’t believe I have to ride this thing for 3.5 hours today…” and even at some point, questioning my mental toughness if I could last that long.  THEN, my mantra of Trainer = Opportunity came back into my mind.  My thoughts turned completely around as I said to myself “I am so lucky I get to ride!  My kids are sick and I need to be close by, and if it weren’t for this trainer… I would not get to ride at all!!!”  It put a smile on my face as I plopped on the bike… and 3.5 hours later, I had one of my strongest most solid rides of the season!  Yay!  I love the trainer, and the opportunities it gives me to ride… WHENEVER! www.tristafrancis.com

Enjoy your training =)