I’m your average middle-aged bloke (well 50plus – is that past middle aged? scary thought – best not dwell on it) who has tried over the years to stay fit mainly through running. I travel a lot for work so the brutally short british winter daylight hours mean keeping it going during the darker months can be a challenge. And a bad winter makes it that much harder to get back on the fitness horse when the spring eventually comes back around (no I don’t have a horse – it’s a metaphor – keep up). On top of that I have a dodgy arthritic knee (the result of a stupid rugby injury) which means it’s not always possible for me to run – it can go weeks or even months feeling stronger than ever and then suddenly it’s like I’m running on ground glass and the knee’s a swollen painful mess making any kind of impact exercise impossible. Arthritis is a bitch. So what to do to keep a regular fitness routine when the weather sucks and the knee blows….
True to form my knee flared up a few weeks back so I started looking at my options.The first was the rowing machine we have in the garage – a leftover from the girls membership of the local rowing club. Great cardio workout but… well it’s a rowing machine right? As exercise goes it doesn’t go anywhere (metaphorically or literally) and for me it gets a bit boring. Plus as a clumsy top-heavy, balance-free oaf I’m never going to get in an actual boat and row so aside from the health benefits, it all feels a bit pointless. It’s a good added extra for my training plan then but it’s never going to be up there as my goto alternative to running.
The Missus is also into keeping fit and she recently mentioned getting a turbo – a fixed wheel trainer for the bike. So after a little research I shelled out for one “for her” for Xmas and got myself – I mean her – a Cycle-ops Fluid 2 turbo. I set it up in the conservatory and off we went.
Right off the bat I loved it. I set an old iPad and an android phone on a music stand in front of it so I could watch YouTube spinning classes (sad I know) and could record my stats while cycling along on the turbo. At this point you’re probably thinking “why doesn’t the idiot just cycle outdoors?” Well – tried that and a) traffic and bikes dont mix, b) british winter weather, short days, my work travel timetable and outdoor cycling dont mix and c) last time I was out I hit a pothole, bust a wheel and went ass over elbow. To be fair when I was lucky enough to work close enough to home I did cycle to and from the office for five years. But now the chance would be a fine thing. Plus I stopped doing that when a transit van knocked me off the bike. For a self-employed person the idea of breaking something (or worse) just to keep fit is not appealing.
I digress….
The Fluid 2 is a great bit of kit, you just pop the rear wheel of your bike onto the fiction wheel, jump on and ride. It’s simple, robust and relatively cheap and it gives a very realistic riding experience. And when you want to get outdoors, just unclip from the turbo and off you go – couldn’t be simpler. I’d definitely recommend it as a starter turbo.
It will become evident that I love a bit of tech and there are a load of apps out there for the phone or tablet to monitor heart-rate, calories burned, power, distance, speed etc so the phone, ipad and Fluid 2 combination were great. I was off and running and loving it (yes another metaphor – or is it a simile?). There was just one problem. Or two actually. Firstly the higher I set the friction the quicker I burned through inner tubes – I’ve never had so many flats. And secondly try as I might I just could not get the resistance up to that killer level that I wanted.
I had also recently started using the fixed cycle at the work gym and the resistance levels on that made my Fluid 2 feel a bit underwhelming. Now this is not to criticise the Fluid 2 turbo – I’m sure it was something to do with my setup , but whatever it was I started to feel frustrated. So I cast around for alternatives – something that would give the experience of a three grand gym bike without the eye watering price tag.
My first thought was a Watt Bike These baby’s are (apparently) used by the British Cycling Team so must be pretty good. However price again put me off – you’re looking at somewhere towards the £2k mark – too rich for my blood. So I settled on a Wahoo Kickr . This one is endorsed by the Sky Team and on the eye-watering-cost scale it’s closer to a punch on the nose than the Watt Bike’s full-on kick in the minerals. Expensive – but you can get it on finance ( e.g. from Wiggle ) which I can justify as the same as a years gym membership.
The Kickr is a great bit of kit. No great is too understated. I love it and basically want to have it’s babies.
Compared to the Fluid 2 it delivers a max power outage of about 2100 watts which is more than enough for my requirements. It’s very quiet and delivers a really realistic road-like feel to the point where I find myself trying to lean into corners on Zwift Island (more on this on a bit) or trying to take a more aerodynamic posture (so laughable if you’ve ever seen my non-aerodynamic silhouette)
It’s easy to set up – just drop your back wheel off and pop the rear of the bike onto the Kickr, adjust the height, plug it into the mains and your ready to roll – there’s not much more to it than that.
But the true delight with the Kickr is the number and ways it interacts with different apps and applications. For a start as well as recording just about every type of statistic you could ask for (power, cadence, speed, heartrate etc) the free Wahoo app itself let’s you control the resistance of the device in various modes – so suddenly those YouTube spinning videos can really be like being in a class. On top of which it interacts with any number of third party apps available e.g. Trainer Road to deliver an engaging challenging training experience. I’d recommend DC Rainmaker’s blog for a pretty comprehensive list of the software available and an in depth review of the Kickr.
For me though the killer app is Zwift Island . It’s like a Wii app for cyclists where you ride in real time against other people on a virtual tropical island. It’s fun, it’s challenging, it makes training interesting but most of all it’s addictive. Just this week I found myself racing around the imaginary island at 1am! In fact my biggest challenge is getting the Missus and Thing 2 (the younger daughter) off it long enough to get some time in on it myself.
I’ll probably be writing a lot more on this over time but at the moment, suffice to say I am really really loving the Kickr and Zwift combo – and I can’t wait to see how they both develop over time.
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