Ask a Cycling Coach

Dear Cycling Coach,

I seem to have developed tennis elbow—but from mountain biking! How is this possible? I’ve never even touched a racquet!

Kaitlin C, Fairfax, CA

Dear Kaitlin,

I have encountered this myself, and the problem was: hydraulic fluid. Not in my elbow, but in one of my bike’s brake lines. By any chance have you been ignoring a disc brake that needs to be bled? Like, when you pull the lever nothing happens unless you pump it multiple times? Well, that’s a repetitive motion and those can add up. But if your brakes are fine, I honestly don’t know what’s going on there. Maybe see a shrink? ;-)

Dear Cycling Coach,

I’m kind of new to mountain biking and people are telling me I should “go tubeless,” whatever that means. What are these people talking about and should I listen?

Aaron W, Minneapolis, MN

Dear Aaron,

For decades, bike tires always had an inner tube inside them, which occasionally got punctured by a thorn, bit of glass, etc. or by being pushed too hard into the wheel rim due to an impact. The more modern setup (common, but by no means ubiquitous) is to not have a tube at all; the tire forms a seal against the rim, aided by this goo that you pour in there. It’s a big mess, a fair bit of hassle, and requires an air compressor or special pump to inflate, but it’s actually worth it. It saves weight, lets you run your tires at a lower pressure, and best of all the goo seals up punctures as you ride. (I’ve had student athletes on the high school mountain biking team who went four whole seasons without a single puncture!) If you want advice on how to set this up, including how to build your own human-powered compressor on the cheap, check out my post here. Now, on road bikes things get even trickier; if you overinflate the tire it could blow off the rim. So, I’m not necessarily recommending tubeless for road…

Dear Cycling Coach,

Do girls dig cyclists? I’m asking for a friend.

John S, Ashburn, VA

Dear John,

Of course they do! I mean, what’s not to dig? We’ve got these thin T-Rex arms; hairless legs; brightly colored form-fitting costumes like a jockey wears; and best of all, we’re always mansplaining on such lofty topics as bike gearing, cycling nutrition, and power output. I should think we’d be every woman’s wet dream. In fact, in my youth I had young babes falling all over me. Hmm. Do I have that right? I’m trying to remember … actually, come to think of it, they were falling all over the football players and the swimmers. Weird.

[A note on the above picture: I had ChatGPT create it for me. This was its third attempt. I asked for the cyclist to have “very thin, weak-looking arms,” for him to be “lean but thin and unimpressive,” and (on my third attempt) to be “much less muscular, kind of wimpy looking.” It appears that ChatGPT-4-turbo is simply incapable of rendering men as anything but grotesquely muscular and roided out. And as I’ve noted before in these pages, it cannot draw a woman who doesn’t have at least one bare shoulder. Oh well. I tried.]

Dear Cycling Coach,

Cycling is the only sport I do, and in the winter it’s too cold and dark to ride so my fitness falls off. I’m thinking of getting a stationary trainer or maybe rollers. Do you recommend this and if so do you have any advice on what to buy, how to get started, etc.?

Lisa N, Columbus, OH

Dear Lisa,

There are several good reasons to ride indoors: you get the stress relief you need; you build character; you go into the spring with better fitness, so you can keep up with your pals; you avoid the wretchedness of riding in the cold and wet; and you (most likely) avoid crashing. All this being said, you’ll need fortitude because indoor training presents a particularly tough gumption trap. The good news is, I provide lots of advice on indoor training here.

Specifically regarding rollers, they are definitely more difficult than a stationary trainer (i.e., you can’t just shut your brain off), but they’re slightly more fun, and they also improve your balance. You’ll definitely want the type that provide resistance (though I provide some hacks on that here). If you’re into a top-of-the-line product, check out my review of the best ones on the market.

Whatever mode of indoor cycling you choose, I highly recommend noise-cancelling headphones and high-energy music with a solid beat. For my workout music megamix, click here.

Dear Cycling Coach,

I love to ride with my friends but it’s hard to coordinate schedules. I dislike riding alone, but my friends all do it. What’s their secret and/or how do I handle the drudgery of cycling solo?

Tracy A, Castle Rock, CO

Dear Tracy,

I see two ways to proceed. One is to see what alternatives exist, such as joining a local club, asking around about group rides, or trying to recruit more cycling buddies. The other is to tackle the solo riding challenge head-on. Going it alone is definitely an acquired taste—it took me until my third year of bike racing to begin to enjoy or at least tolerate it—but it’s well worth it in the long run.

Some ways to motivate yourself:

1. Remind yourself that “stealth training” will make the group rides even more fun
2. If you’re worried about safety, figure out the routes where you’ll encounter plenty of people (and not get bike-jacked, though honestly I think this is a fictitious problem, like ring-around-the-collar)
3. Gamify your solo cycling, either by competing virtually with friends or family or joining Strava.

For more on riding alone, click here.

Dear Cycling Coach,

What chain lubricant should I use? And would this be different for mountain vs. road?

Malcolm R, Oakland, CA

Dear Malcolm,

I could provide an exhaustive treatise about why I choose White Lightning Clean Ride for all my bikes, but wouldn’t you rather read a very brief synopsis, or ideally a poem? Well guess what: you can click here for a nice little sonnet on the topic, replete with end notes. Best of all, it was written by an English major who is also a recovering bike mechanic and a bona-fide coach!

Dear Cycling Coach,

My crappy old bike helmet is coming completely apart. I’m kinda relieved because I never liked that helmet to begin with. But looking at a new one, I see options varying from the lightly used helmet for $4 at Salvation Army to over $300 for a goofy-looking thing at my local shop. Is there any difference among these or is it all marketing?

Emily K, Portland, OR

Dear Emily,

There actually is a big difference, to a point. No, a $300 helmet is not going to be worlds away from a $150 helmet, but you don’t want some bogus made-up brand like Victgoal or Odoland that crumbles in your hands and smells like kerosene. Here’s a true story: when I was on a college cycling team, we were sponsored by an up-and-coming bike helmet company and we all got free helmets. The problem was, they didn’t fit that well, and the straps weren’t quite right, and at high speed the wind would blow this thing back on my head, exposing my forehead. I thought I should replace it but I was already a notorious cheap bastard, and even though I worked at a bike shop and got a discount, I tried to live the motto “cheap’s neat, but free’s me.” So I kept asking the Giro rep to sponsor me with a free helmet. Several times he offered only a discount and I replied, “What am I supposed to tell my helmet sponsor … that I paid for another brand? If you gave it to me, it’d be a lot easier.”

Finally he relented, and I got a top-of-the-line Giro, which fit really well, not slipping back on my head like that free helmet. Well, on the Giro’s maiden voyage I crashed really hard mountain biking (as described here). I was knocked out cold, and was airlifted to the closest head trauma center. I ended up being fine … but only thanks to that well-fitting helmet. Ever since, I have been a real stickler on head protection, and I think you should, too. That doesn’t necessarily mean dropping hundreds of dollars, but get something that really fits, that you really like and will always wear.

(By the way, that bit about knock-off helmets crumbling and smelling like kerosene? I didn’t mean that. I meant creosote. Naw, kidding again. But trust me about avoiding those weird, cheap helmets on Amazon that come with built-in sunglasses and/or a balaclava and no, I’m actually not making that up.)

Dear Cycling Coach,

I’ve noticed you get as many letters from women as from men, and yet something like three fourths of American cyclists are men. Do you just ignore a lot of the men’s questions so as to achieve gender parity? Or do women ask better questions?

Jeannie E, Seattle, WA

Dear Jeannie,

I actually get as many questions from women as from men. I think this is because women are less insecure and thus more likely to ask for advice. I base this on a bike maintenance class I once offered as a prize at the fundraising auction at my kids’ school. In the advertisement I didn’t say anything about me being female, or about the class being for women. But I guess because of my girl’s name, people just assumed, because eight women and only one man signed up. When the man arrived and saw all these women, he immediately bailed. Well, halfway through the class, during the refreshment break, a student approached and complained about my being a man. “I kind of assumed you’d be a woman,” she said testily. I replied, “I certainly didn’t mean to imply that in the flyer, and I’m sorry about my girl’s name … it’s the one I was given and it didn’t occur to me to clarify. I’m happy to give you a refund.” She backed off at that point but still seemed miffed. I guess she understood something about men that I didn’t…

Dear Cycling Coach,

I read an article somewhere, years ago, about how too much cycling can damage your heart. Should I be worried about literally killing myself on the bike?

Suzie L, Queens, NY

Dear Suzie,

You might be thinking of the article “Cycling to Extremes” in the August 2015 issue of Velo magazine. I thoroughly refute its claims here. Beyond that, there have been various alarmist articles in a similar vein over the years. I think it’s a bit silly to be worrying about such a remote possibility given the obesity epidemic in this country, with heart disease being the leading cause of death. I'll concede that an overweight 60-year-old American, whose arteries are totally clogged, can kill himself by suddenly doing something really strenuous; for example, you hear about guys dying of cardiac arrest while shoveling snow. But that's not very common, and presumably you’re a fit cyclist doing a consistent program. If it were really possible for athletes to work themselves to death, don't you think it would happen all the time in professional races?

Think about it: the ability to work yourself to death would not be naturally selected in the evolution of any creature. Or, if you subscribe to the intelligent design theory, what kind of blind idiot God would design creatures that could accidentally kill themselves by trying to do something useful, and do it well? Do you believe that you are somehow going to be able to push yourself harder than 100+ years of Tour de France racers? I think you can rest easy on this one, Suzie. But hey, that’s just my opinion. I’m not a doctor or anything.

Dear Cycling Coach,

I was out for a road ride and joined a group that passed me. I thought I was doing pretty well but then I overheard somebody say, “Who invited the Fred?” I take it “Fred” isn’t a good thing. What did he mean and how offended should I be? Was I doing something wrong?

Peter L, San Diego, CA

Dear Peter,

It’s possible that you were disturbing the flow of the group (by letting gaps open, etc.) but it’s equally possible the “Fred” comment simply came from a snob. Like any sport, cycling has its share of elitist types who may forget what it was like being closer to a novice than a racer. Maybe the guy didn’t like your helmet, or your socks (or lack thereof), or the kind of shoes you were wearing, or that your bike had a pie plate.

There are two ways to handle this. One: you could simply blow it off and enjoy yourself on the bike. Cycling has always attracted rebels, and I hope it always does. Two: you could review my two-part article on how to not be a “Fred.” Part I is here and Part II is here. But please remember: this guide is only for people who want to fit in. Those who don’t care about fitting in have my full respect, and deserve yours, too.

A Cycling Coach is a syndicated journalist whose advice column, “Ask a Cycling Coach,” appears in over 0 blogs worldwide.

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From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume VI

Introduction

This is the sixth installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, and Volume V is here. But the different volumes have nothing to do with one another.

Yes, it’s another slow news day. So, taking a cue from writers like David Sedaris and Lydia Davis, I’m assembling and posting some excerpts from some old letters. If I too were a famous writer, these micro-dispatches could be gathered into a handsome printed volume sold in bookstores everywhere (i.e., I could basically print my own money). Instead, since I’m an unsung blogger, you can read them for free!

These ones were all written while I was a student at Berkeley.

October 26, 1990

My schedule is so weird, I have to do my cycling indoors sometimes, even when the weather is great. I don’t ride my rollers in the basement laundry room anymore, though. Here’s why. They have this timer knob hooked up to the overhead light, to keep it from being left on. I was riding my rollers in there in the pre-dawn hours before work, and gave no thought to the timer. So I was riding along and suddenly there was this loud “DING!” and the lights went out. I crashed instantaneously. My Walkman went sailing across the room and broke into like three pieces. So now I’m keeping the rollers in the apartment and riding them there. I have this headwind accessory that makes them harder than actual riding. Good complement to all the hills around here.

February 12, 1991

I suddenly find myself in the terrifying position of going head-to-head with the most depraved, cruel band of thugs the free world has ever known. These miscreants have no regard for peace of mind; they loot solace and tranquility like a roadside gas station or liquor store. Meet Mr. First‑and‑Last‑Month Rent: wanted in six states for Financial Burden with Intent to Ruin. Mr. Damage Deposit: known to be armed and dangerous, wanted by federal authorities for Monetary Assault on a College Student. A recent stakeout found that these two are operating with an accomplice: Kid Tuition and his gang, the Three Installments. What could all this mean? Only one thing: I’m laying it all on the line by finding a new apartment. Which means raising a lot of cash in a hurry. Got any quasi-legal, or (what the hell) totally illegal hustles you can bring me in on?

July 16, 1991

Our local sales tax has been raised to 8.25%, and extended to cover snack foods. This is interesting: candy bars and potato chips are taxed, while fresh produce and wheat flour are not. It gets complicated: all crackers are taxed, except Saltines. Popped popcorn is taxed, but not un-popped. (Do you get a rebate on the un-popped “old maids” in the popped popcorn?) At the bike shop [where I work] these items present some complications. Powerbars, for example, contain 100% of the U.S. R.D.A. of most vitamins and minerals, and have only a gram of fat: hardly typical snack food. Yet, they still don’t really qualify as grocery. So today, in my capacity as shop manager, I put the following notice on the Powerbar display:

DEAR CUSTOMERS:

Recently enacted tax legislation requires us to charge the new tax rate (8.25%) on all snack foods. Since Powerbars and XL 40 bars are “great anytime as a snack” they are now taxable items. But since Exceed High Carbohydrate Source “supplies as much carbohydrate as 6 cups enriched spaghetti, 8 medium sized baked potatoes, or 11 slices of white bread,” it qualifies as a grocery item and is therefore not taxed.

September 19, 1991

Here is the opening passage of the article I was supposed to have read for today for my Honors English seminar: 

Perhaps something has occurred in the history of the concept of structure that could be called an “event,” if this loaded word did not entail a meaning which it is precisely the function of structural or structuralist thought to reduce or to suspect.

Keeping in mind that the opening sentence is supposed to lure the reader into further study, I find this beginning atrocious. But amazingly, it gets worse:

It would be easy enough to show that the concept of structure and even the word “structure” itself are as old as the episteme—that is to say, as old as western science and western philosophy—and that their roots thrust deep into the soil of ordinary language, into whose deepest recesses the episteme plunges to gather them together once more, making them part of itself in a metaphorical displacement.

For me to be reading this might suggest that I’m some kind of elite student who can grasp really complex ideas. But the sad truth of the matter is that I am no better equipped to handle this than you are. Probably less equipped, actually, given my youth and naiveté. This essay rages on for twenty-six pages, getting increasingly obtuse, and I never made it past the first five pages, with zero percent comprehension. Thus in one day I have fallen hopelessly behind, since the rest of the reading for this course (one such essay per class day) is doubtless based on this foundational essay.

So I walked into class this morning very ill prepared, and thought to myself, “Self, don’t despair, the rest of the class is probably as overwhelmed as I am.” This day I happened to be early, for—having given up my attempt to read the essay—I had nothing better to do than to make a big breakfast and leave for school well ahead of time. I ask the first fellow student I saw what he thought of the essay. “I really enjoyed it, how about you?” he said, apparently with perfect sincerity. I told him that to be perfectly honest, I had found it somewhat difficult. He frowned, as if surprised to hear that, and said, “I found it similar to Beckett, didn’t you?” I vaguely remember a Sir Thomas Becket who wrote some religious thing, maybe about people flogging themselves or something, but couldn’t make a connection. [I realized weeks after writing this my classmate meant Samuel Beckett.]

I spent the class period realizing that for perhaps the first time, I’m hopelessly outclassed by my peers. I start to fret and sweat, it gets hot, I can’t get away, the prof rolls, I’m popped. How’d I get into this spot? I played myself. But why am I facing off against this fierce foe? The faculty’s fault? No. Nobody signed me up for the course; nobody enrolled me by force. I thought I that I could excel at this big school? Fool. I played myself. [Apologies to Ice-T.]

February 27, 1992

I was studying yesterday in Sproul plaza, sitting on a bench, and an old man came and sat down by me, with nothing to occupy him but people watching. Eventually we had some conversation: he’s 85 years old (didn’t look it!) and from Russia. He didn’t seem to recognize Lolita, which I was reading, and was surprised at my choice of the English major, having studied engineering himself. He says in Russia, those with a college degree are admitted to a special grocery store that those without a degree are not. Same prices in the alumni-only store, but much vaster variety and availability of goods. He didn’t say how the store vets these people, and I didn’t ask.

During the big rains we had a week or so ago, I parked my bike under the bridge between LeConte Hall and Birge Hall, just east of Sather Tower, before going into Doe Library (through the back entrance, as a construction project has blocked the front and snarled most paths through campus). It wasn’t raining that afternoon but my precaution was well taken: when I finally left the library in the late evening, the rain had started up again. Groggy from my scholastic haze, I was shocked to find that nature and weather and the out-of-doors had all continued without me. Riding down Bancroft, I was impressed by the electrifying effect the rain had: extra-shiny reflections on the cars, and extra-black asphalt with a neon-like red reflections of taillights.

In five minutes I’ll leave go to tutor at Malcolm X school. My student, “Eddie,” is trying to imitate my out-loud reading by going as fast as he can. This means the words come out at the same pace as before, but with a tone of frantic urgency and almost no pause between words. I sometimes worry that he isn’t retaining what he has read, but last week we worked together on a book report and I found he’s getting most of it. His dopey teacher had acted like he’s a hopeless case, totally checked out, etc. but I find he works pretty hard if someone’s around to help him focus.

May 25, 1992

Doesn’t it piss you off when you get a defective band-aid? At the bike shop we have Curad. As you know, these are not the band-aids we grew up with, and I find myself somewhat hostile to them. Their lack of quality control is one of the small but nagging travesties that plague my employment at the shop. I would say about one in three Curad band-aids is defective. The little sanitary cotton pad is skewed, and sometimes has missed the center of the adhesive portion, so you get just a little triangle of pad, and the rest is free to stick to the wound. I really can’t believe the bandaging public tolerates Curads at all. At home I use Johnson & Johnson Band-Aid brand. This becomes expensive since I’m constantly washing dishes or taking my contact lenses out or something. I’m tempted to just leave the wet band-aids on and let them dry out, but I called Johnson & Johnson on their toll free number and asked about this. “You know how the box says they’re waterproof?” I asked. “Oh, yes, they certainly are,” said the lady earnestly, in her charming southern accent. “Well, does that mean I don’t need to change them once they’re wet?” I asked. “Oh, no, you should always replace them—that’s the only way to prevent bacteria from infecting the wound,” she replied. Puzzled, I asked, “Then what’s the benefit of their being waterproof?” A long pause. Finally she said, “Well, if you’re swimming you won’t lose them in the pool. And, they won’t go down the drain.”

September 12, 1992

I have purchased Lila - An Inquiry into Morals by Robert Pirsig, author of the classic Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I hope this second book is good, but I have little faith that it’ll live up to its predecessor. I really loved the Motorcycle book, but the really lame Epilogue, which Pirsig attached to it like a decade later, irritated me so much that I tore it out of the book. This act was, I’ll confess, tantamount to destroying knowledge and human thought itself. Even worse, it loosened the cheap glue binding on the whole book, so that eventually all the pages started falling out—a disaster, especially since this is the one book I really wanted to pass around among my friends. It’s a really shoddy paperback to begin with, from the imprint “BANTAM NEW AGE BOOKS: A Search for Meaning, Growth, and Change.” Other Bantam New Age editions include Ecotopia, Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, and The Complete Crystal Guidebook. What bothers me isn’t so much the nature of these books by themselves—although that alone is annoying—but rather the very idea that Bantam could integrate so many conflicting and discrete books into a single group, as if they could all be united as life philosophies. Like somebody is going to just go right on down the list, finding Meaning, Growth, and Change in every one of these. It’s tempting to think that when Pirsig wrote Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, he would have winced at having his work co-opted into the Bantam New Age menagerie. But actually, the epilogue that he added later totally smacked of the easy, wildly speculative, faux-spiritual sentimentalism that the “NEW AGE BOOKS” line can be presumed to have. Who knows, maybe Pirsig got cocky; after all, his book sold like crazy and impressed a lot of people, many for perhaps the wrong reasons. Anyway, I still have the decrepit Motorcycle paperback, and without the Epilogue it is a work of pure genius. I’ll let you know how Lila ends up going.

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Riding Rollers - Frequently Asked Questions

NOTE:  This post is rated PG-13 for mature themes and mild strong language.

Introduction

Decades ago, when there was no such thing as a mountain bike and the stationary trainer was in its infancy, any racer who could afford it bought a set of rollers.  I wasn’t so lucky, and though as a teen I did win a turbo-trainer in a (rigged) raffle at the Coors Classic Christmas party, I didn’t own a set of rollers until college.  I somehow managed to lose those (maybe my roommate snagged them?) and didn’t buy another set until somewhat recently. 

I’m back riding rollers now, and this post is both a tribute and a useful how-to guide that will tell you (almost) everything you ever wanted to know, or didn’t even know you wanted to know, about riding rollers.  (I say “almost” because I don’t explain herein how to ride rollers.  Just get on and do it, and if you fall off, well, brush yourself off, acknowledge that it is sweet and fitting to hate yourself, and get back on.)

Did I miss something?  E-mail me. 

Riding Rollers – Frequently Asked Questions

Q.  Why should I ride indoors at all?  After all, the Velominati “Rules” website says, “If you are out riding in bad weather, it means you are a badass.  Period.”

A.  First of all, the authority of the Velominati has been thoroughly dismissed in these pages.  I’ve also written at length about the absurdity of choosing to ride in the rain.  Unless you live in such a cold or rainy place you have to capitulate, training indoors makes a lot of sense.

Q.  Why ride rollers instead of a trainer?

A.  You can always tell when a guy has been riding a trainer a lot because he’s pedaling squares.  Rollers, on the other hand, smooth out your form and enhance your grace on the bike.  But that’s only part of why you should ride them.

Frankly, you should ride rollers simply because it’s tricky—because as you get older you need to convince yourself you’ve still got it.  Plus, if you’re the parent of a teenager—a member of the narcissistic “selfie” generation—you must show him or her that there are still cool things you can do that he or she can’t. 

(My teenage daughter, reading this over my shoulder, takes umbrage at the suggestion she’s narcissistic.  She certainly isn’t, and has never taken a selfie, but since I’m running out of things I’m better at than she, it’s important that she sees me riding rollers and is suitably impressed.)

Besides, anything that improves your balance mitigates the risk that when you’re really old you’ll fall and break your hip, which is so often the beginning  of the end for the elderly. 

Q.  I’m a teenager, and I think learning to ride rollers looks like a lot of hassle.  And I don’t need to worry about balance because I will never get old and I will never die. 

A.  Wow, my blog attracted a teenager!  That’s amazing!  Wait, where are you going?  Come back, I won’t bite! 

Okay, look.  It’s time to admit that you’ll never have a massive presence on Vine, and nobody is going to “like” that Instagram photo of your cheesecake as much as the identical cheesecake photo sent around by a popular or attractive kid.  But imagine posting a YouTube video of yourself eating half a grapefruit, properly, with a spoon, while riding rollers no-handed (the acid test of m4d sk1llz in this albeit remote realm).  If your video were to end with you tilting your head back to drink the juice and thus crashing, that video might get a lot of hits!  Man, it’s a shame there was no Internet or YouTube when I was thirteen…

Q.  Say I buy a pair of rollers and like them.  Should I get rid of my fluid trainer?

A.  No, keep it around because sometimes you just want to zone out, mosh on the pedals stupidly, and not have to keep up that finesse.  I’m keeping my trainer even though the damn thing has developed this horrible knocking sound I’m too lazy to troubleshoot, which is embarrassing because years ago I positioned myself as an authority on choosing a trainer, and now this thing’s dying even though it’s not that old.  At least, it doesn’t seem that old.  Though actually, I came across this video involving the box that trainer came in, and I guess it’s not that new.

That little girl in the video?  She (the aforementioned non-narcissistic teenager) is over 5-foot-3 now and rode up Mount Diablo with me not long ago.

Q.  My wife has a policy about physical objects that take up space in the home or garage:  to justify its existence, she says on object “has to either be making me happy, or making me money.”  By this standard, how can I justify owning both a trainer and rollers?

A.  If we’re permitted to define happiness as “absence of unhappiness,” remind your wife how crucial exercise is to your physical and mental health.  Given your hopeless starch addiction, If you didn’t have all the tools necessary to facilitate your exercise, you’d end up looking like Henry VIII.  Would your wife really enjoy being crushed under all that weight?  Besides, without exercise you’d also be as grumpy as Henry VIII, and we all know how that panned out.  (This is an especially powerful argument in my household, as my wife has failed to produce a male heir.)

(By the way, I have made money via riding rollers.  When I was a UC Santa Barbara student, the cycling team set up a roller demonstration in the student plaza to raise money for our trip to nationals.  We put out a hat to collect donations, and offered to try really advanced tricks—stuff that had “never before been attempted,” like riding rollers no-handed or at 50 mph—if somebody would drop in a $10 or $20 bill.  Plus, when one of our more hunky roller-demo riders, the affectionately nicknamed Brad Longshlong, got his photo on the front page of the school paper, that was arguably better publicity than the team got when we won a national title.)

Q.  My rollers don’t have a magnetic resistance thingy.  I can pedal along at over 25 mph without actually getting much of a workout.  Is there any way to add resistance without spending any money?

A.  The best rollers, which would be Al Kreitlers with the Headwind Fan, give you all the resistance you could want.  But even if you have more basic rollers, there are a couple things you can do.

First off, when riding rollers, use your old “rain bike” with its non-compact crank (i.e., higher gearing) and its old-school, less aerodynamic wheels.  You can also put cards in the spokes to hamper the aerodynamics.  I haven’t done any scientific tests to see if this actually helps, but as everybody knows, cards in the spokes is just plain fun.  [Update:  new Q/A answered at the end of this post describing the results of this experiment.]

If you’re really serious about a good workout, your best bet is to set up your brakes so they’re always on.  You could do this with a toe-strap crudely wrapped around the brake lever, but the better way is to open the brake quick-release cam and then tighten the brake, using the barrel-adjuster, so it’s almost rubbing.  Then, during the ride, you can adjust the braking by turning down the QR cam to the desired resistance.

Q.  But won’t having my brakes on the whole time cause my rims to get super-hot, thus damaging my brake pads?

A.  As it turns out, the amount of drag necessary to give you a good workout doesn’t actually generate very much heat.  What really makes rims hot is braking on a descent, which involves much greater forces, such as gravity.  Consider this hypothetical scenario:  you and your brother Bryan are descending by bike to a party being held in a remote house along a mountain road.  The driveway is unmarked, so your other brother has promised to put out a sign or some balloons so you can find it… but he forgets, so you miss the turnoff, and then the mountain road turns to dirt, and you puncture several times until you’re out of spare tubes and patches, and you have to ride double on Bryan’s bike with your own bike over your shoulder.  Bryan is braking pretty hard to keep from stacking, which makes his hands so tired he has to stop periodically to rest them.  As you awkwardly climb off his bike, you actually burn yourself on his bike’s rim.  See?  All that weight, concentrated on one bike, gets those brakes hotter than your wrath toward the third brother … and yet, descending solo, your rims never get that hot, unless they’re carbon rims and you’re an under-skilled and overweight stockbroker riding Levi’s Granfondo.

Q.  The floor of my man-cave isn’t perfectly level.  How can I level my rollers?

A.  Palace a coin under each foot on one side.  Use British pound coins; they’re thicker.  If this isn’t enough to level your rollers, you need to re-pour the foundation of your man-cave, or set the rollers up in your wife’s secret underground lair (in which case you should put a tarp down to protect the hardwood floor).

Q.  Say I’m a teenager and don’t have my own rollers so I’m at my friend’s place riding his, and his foster parents’ four-year-old is fishing for attention by running across the room and diving into a bean bag chair, and I’m ignoring her because I don’t want to encourage her attention-junkie ways, and/or I’m just a dick, and finally she gets so frustrated at the lack of attention she comes up and grabs my handlebars and pulls me off the rollers.  What should I do?

A.  Do nothing.  In particular, don’t yell at her because then she’ll start crying and run and get her mom, who is one weird lady.

Q.  What if my cat, mesmerized by the spinning wheels and also not very bright, tries to jump right through my wheel?

A.  This could never happen.  No cat is that stupid.  The person who warned you about that “possibility” is a broken-down alcoholic and it’s really sad.

Q.  What if the power goes out while I’m riding rollers, and there’s not enough natural light to see by?

A.  If you’re in the basement of your apartment building and not near a wall, all you can do is crash.  If you’re near the wall and the power is going out for just a few seconds at a time (for example, if it’s 6 a.m. and the biggest winter storm in ten years is wreaking havoc), brace an elbow on the wall until the lights come back on.  If they go out for good, but you’ve already taken your NoDoz and you’re halfway through your workout and thus too amped-up and sweaty to go back to bed and don’t care to shower in the dark, just set up some candles on either side of the front roller, to use like airport landing lights.  You may find this mood lighting takes your relationship with your rollers to a whole new level. Next time I think I’ll scatter little rose petals around as well.

Q.  But wait, if the power is out, the fan won’t work!  What about the ravages of sweat on my equipment?  And won’t I overheat?

A.  Open some windows.  This works great if you can get some cross-ventilation, especially if it’s cold out and the wind is really blowing.

Q.  But what if the rain comes blowing in the window and gets all over my expensive wireless LAN equipment?

A.  Spec your man-cave out with a Meraki MR72 Ruggedized Access Point.  That bad boy is built to withstand harsh environmental conditions:  not just rain, but extreme temperature ranges from -40°F to 140°F.  (Trust me:  if it’s -40° or 140° out, you’re really better off riding indoors.)

Addenda

A couple of readers wrote in with more questions, and even did me the service of providing the answers. Plus, I now have the results of my cards-in-the-spokes experiment.

Q. Should I watch bike videos/races while riding my rollers?

A. Probably not. Even a very skilled rider (like my East Bay Velo Club pal Ryan, who wrote in with this question) may occasionally get too wrapped up in what’s onscreen, and veer off the side. This isn’t the same as a high-speed crash, but the bike can leave you behind and careen forward, possibly even into the TV. Meanwhile, as Ryan points out, “It is very difficult to watch a descent without leaning when you see the cyclists on TV lean in the turns.”

Q. What’s with these crazy-looking rollers that have a smaller diameter than mine? I’m oddly impressed and intimidated by them but I don’t know why.

A. You’re right to feel intimidated. As detailed here, smaller-diameter rollers provide greater resistance. Kreitler explains why: “For a given wheel speed, smaller drums rotate at higher RPM’s than larger drums, producing more friction in the sealed cartridge bearings. Smaller drums also create more tire friction because the roller has a smaller contact patch and indents the tire more.” If you don’t have the money to spring for a set of Kreitler rollers with 2.25-inch drums, perhaps letting some air out of your tires (so they indent more, increasing friction) would help. (Thanks to my cycling pal Phil for bringing this up.)

Q. So how did the cards in the spokes work out?

A. Really well, actually! Probably in part because my high-power fan (see photo above) points up at the front wheel, the wind drag of those cards makes pedaling a lot harder. In fact, depending on what cadence you prefer, how high your gearing is, how hard you like to go, and how strong you are, the cards in the spokes might offer all the resistance you need (thus obviating the need for messing with the barrel-adjusters on your brakes).