July 15, 2010
I use an Elite mag trainer but the Wattbike seems to be a well thought out indoor cycling tool
I’ve chewed up a few tyres on a range of trainers, the last couple being fairly standard Elite units. I think the first indoor trainer I tried was in the mid-’80s and was called a ‘Racermate’ or similar. It was a wind trainer with a finned ‘fan’ at the back. It wore out both rear tyres and itself, but I kept it going for maybe 10 years all up before moving to an Elite mag unit. I sweat copiously and am not afraid of a 1 hour session – my all-time record on one of these things is 100km – and every unit seems inevitably to rust. Not to mention the bike, too. I’ve tended to use either sacrificial “retired” steel bikes or newer aluminium ones and catch the sweat with a towel. I’ve tried a fan but prefer a “semi-outdoor” airy under-the-back-deck location. And I use an ibike power meter these days to capture some data from that spinning rear wheel. Whilst it all works OK, there are better indoor trainers with bigger flywheels out there these days. And really, nothing really beats riding on the road.
But maybe the latest crop of indoor trainers, including the interesting LeMond creation (which ditches the rear wheel entirely) will tempt me. The fancy Wattbike has also caught my eye… not that I can justify the expense!
Wattbike Polar View – Wattbike
When cycling, you can play around with the graph – pushing on the left leg will create a large force shape on the left, pushing hard on the right leg will enlarge the graph on the right. You see a percentage beneath each side, telling you how much power each leg is generating. Standing up and altering your cycling technique will produce a change in the graph.
