Low Power High Tension

Being able to ride no handed and standing (but not simultaneously - if you can do that you destroy me) are essential to happiness on rollers. Usually I just stand to relieve taintular pressure and make sure my skeleton doesn't rust into place. Last night I was doing another light spin on the rollers (mellow week) and decided to try something new. Standing on rollers, from a muscular perspective, is much different and more demanding than standing on a trainer or on the road. Here you go:

10 minute warmup.
1 minute standing, 4 minutes seated.
2 minutes standing, 3 minutes seated.
3 minutes standing, 2 minutes seated.
4 minutes standing, 1 minute seated.
5 minutes standing.
1 minute seated, 4 minutes standing.
2 minutes seated, 3 minutes standing.
3 minutes seated, 2 minutes standing.
4 minutes seated, 1 minute standing.
5 minutes seated.

There are a lot of new and unusual muscles which come into play when you do this. In particular, the bottom of the quad area to the inside of the knees, the mid back and ab muscles, the shoulders, triceps and hands all get a pretty thorough going over. Not in a painful "holy crap I can't move" kind of way but in an enlivening way. The overwhelming sense is that you have a lot of tension as you do it since you need to have pretty precise movements or you will fall off.

Also, it's kind of hard to look at your watch or computer while you're doing this, so you might want to have some alternate way of keeping track of time. I just counted based on approximate cadence.

It was a good workout, but the true test will come after all of the walking around I do today doing punch list stuff. Physically, my job is a lot like nursing over the last couple of weeks and for the next several days. No wonder they all have varicose veins, it's a workout.