It’s a challenge to get exercise when you have a young baby. It’s not just because you can’t leave them to fend for themselves while you trot around the block for a run.

Has your body healed enough to exercise? Do you have the energy after getting up five times last night to feed them? Should you be tackling the pile of laundry or vacuuming the floor (that is looking rather gritty) instead of focusing on your fitness? Is it cruel to take them for a walk in the pram in the wind and rain?

I knew that to exercise I’d have to find a way to do it that did not involve leaving the house, so I bought a wind trainer to use with my bike.

After some trial and error I have found the perfect method for a successful session on the wind trainer which I will share with you today. Below you will find the recipe for success, you can thank me later by sending me wine and cheese.

INGREDIENTS

• Wind trainer – ordered online and held up due to duties tax which has turned in to a guilt tax at the amount you spent on it
• Bicycle – best to have one with a filthy chain to match the rest of your filthy house
• Large television – high-res so you can see details through sweaty squinting eyes
• Table or shelf – at roughly the height of your top tube, wide enough to fit a baby on
• Baby wrangling tools – i.e dummy, bottle, toys, a length of rope, your mum
• Sleeping baby – (Do not use an awake baby, your recipe will be ruined)

METHOD

1. Set up the wind trainer in front of the TV, lining up the cassette with the black smear of rubber you burned in to the carpet last time you tried to exercise on your bike.

HOT TIP! Set baby to sleep mode after you have set up your wind trainer to allow yourself three extra minutes of exercise.

2. Baby placement in relation to the bike is key if this recipe is to be a success. A good baby placement is to have their mouth within reach of your hand. When (not if, when) they cry you can easily put a bottle, dummy, or chain-grease covered finger into their mouth to placate them.

The best position is with baby sleeping parallel with your bike,  just out of range so that your knee doesn’t connect with their tiny infant body on the up stroke and fling them behind you. In this position it is easy to pick them up and dangle a sweaty breast into their mouth if they start to make screamy noises at you.

3. Put on a documentary about cycling, it should include doping, so pick any Tour de France race coverage. Watching people inject drugs into their butt cheeks will alleviate any parental guilt that you feel at putting yourself first and exercising when you think you should be cleaning, cooking, or doing baby related admin. Good on you for not injecting EPO in to your stretch mark-covered, saggy black underpants wearing, wobbly, sweaty ass cheeks. You’re going to earn a fitter bum-bum the honest way.

HOT TIP! Watch Icarus, Rodchenkov’s mother personally injected him with performance enhancing drugs. You aren’t doing any such thing to your precious baby, so while your kid might not win Olympic gold YOU might still win mother of the year!

4. Start the white noise of your pedalling BEFORE you turn on the TV to avoid any loud bangs that may activate the child’s startle reflex. If you can be bothered doing intervals, make sure that when you finish that hard minute of pedalling that you don’t clunk the gears changing them back down. This loud metal bang accompanied with your tired grunting activates the startle reflex in the baby, followed by the ‘waaaaah’ siren that is difficult to turn off without dismounting your bike.

5. If you begin to lose motivation, glance over at the baby’s head. Now look back at your bike seat, now back at the head. Your vagina has pushed out a thing bigger than the bike seat you’re sitting on, you’re a total bad ass! Superwoman,  if you laboured for hours then you can pedal a bike for five more minutes.

HOT TIP! If any sweat drips on to the baby, leave it there. Your child will learn from an early age what hard work tastes like. They have had almost every other possible bodily fluid of yours smeared on them so why not add this one to the collection?

If you begin to lose the will to live, looking at that sweet baby’s head will make you feel much better. You’ve already reproduced so your legacy will live on through the child if you don’t live to see the end of this wind trainer session.