My wife bought me a cycleops fluid 2 trainer for Christmas and I am wondering if it will bore me to death and be a big waist of money. Can anyone share there experiences with a trainer vs. getting out in the open air. I love you ride, but am afraid that the trainer will bore me. Thanks for the feed back!

Nearly everyone agrees that indoor training is not even close as a substitute for real outdoor bike riding. Most of us do it as a wintertime substitute or a supplemental training tool. It can be really valuable to improve your performance if you do it right and, yes, boredom is a near universal complaint. It is best done with some intensity, in small doses, and accompanied by music or videos.

See the "Indoor Riding Season" thread if you haven't already.

Get the Sufferfest videos. Boring, not. Intense - you will learn to hate your trainer, and to hate it regularly! As much as the workouts are hurtful, there will be a benefit in the springtime.

In Wilmington, NC? Take it back and buy some cool weather clothes.

As mentioned before, riding a trainer is in no way the same as riding a bike on the open road. It doesn't even come close. However, if conditions make it difficult or near impossible to ride outdoors, then a trainer helps to keep you from doing nothing at all. I have found that riding a trainer is what you make of it. There are those that absolutely hate using a trainer and those that don't mind it, myself included. I imagine that if you normally ride in a group or normally train to race, that riding the trainer can be extremely boring, but if you ride for health and fitness and you don't care about your power and wattage output then the experience can be whatever you make of it.

In Central Florida, we don't have many cold days to where you can't ride but we do get days to where it's to a point that I don't want to ride. We also have our rainy season where it rains almost every day for pretty much the entire day. These are the days when I use my trainer, which is set up in the dinning room so I can watch TV while I ride. This works well for me, but obviously not for others. I would take what you read here with a grain of salt and try the trainer yourself, doing your type of riding, and form your own opinion.

Thanks for your input...it was helpful!