From the Archives - Brutal Bicycle Training Contest - Part II

Introduction

If you read my last post, you were left hanging, your interest (ideally) kindled about who ended up winning the 2005 Albert training competition. (If you didn’t read my last post go do that first.) This post provides the electrifying conclusion of the protracted, wrenching, ego-drenched battle between brothers. By way of review, the brothers in question are Bryan (at left in the photo below) and Geoff (at right).

Where we left off, I led the competition—after 362 days—by a mere 3.5 points over Geoff. To emphasize how close this was, that’s just 0.12% of my total score to that point. Geoff and I were absolutely neck-and-neck, and both already fried from three brutal weeks on the bike.

Thursday, Dec 29

GEOFF (before riding, and remember, he’s 9 hours ahead of Dana and Bryan): As I look over the [training competition] spreadsheet for inspiration, less than half an hour before I suit up for my final effort of the year, I feel a sense of doom, not unlike that feeling I had when Dad was going to spank the whole lot of us, and I was sent around to friends’ houses to round everyone up. I know I’m going to have to do great things here in the next few hours, and this causes my bowels to constrict with fear. I wonder what will happen... By the time you read this I’ll probably have posted my score. I hope it’s a big one.

GEOFF (42.0 points, indoor – 2 hrs 25 min): In an attempt to demoralize and crush the opposition, I have produced this score. I felt pretty good and decided to shoot for two hours above the [heart rate target] zone. After 1:45 above the zone, I just fell apart. I got off, caffeinated, drank apple juice, emptied my bladder and soaked my head, which got me through another turbulent five minutes, but then it just ended. My legs would go around in circles no longer. I threw in the towel and started cleaning up and warming down.

But then I decided to try again, as this is the end of the year, and climbed back onto the torture rack, made my best effort to turn the pedals around some more, but no, it just would not happen. I was knackered. Had the stuffing completely knocked out of me.

So there it is, 42 points. Dana, if you can top this effort, why, you deserve the win. Who knows though, maybe I’ll feel inspired on Saturday, and will get back on the bike. I doubt it though....

DANA: You bastard! I have no time to ride today and no energy anyway. But I’ve been checking the FTP site all day, waiting to see what you did, and fantasizing about a sub-30 score, the natural result of the fatigue that I hoped would finally catch up to you. But no, instead you get medieval on my heinie, you just shock-and-awe me, with this grotesquely monstrous score. You are a bad, bad man. D’oh. I’m already terribly dreading tomorrow’s hammerfest. It’ll be doubly painful given the obvious futility of my attempt...

[SITUATION: GEOFF AHEAD BY 38 POINTS]

[Here’s a photo from 2006, of the three of us studying our ride data together. We were data slaves long before Strava even existed.]

Friday, Dec 30

BRYAN [catching up from Thursday]: Man, Geoff! What in tarnation are you? The Terminator? Look at these scores! Look at the slope of that graph! Every stinkin’ ride is over 30 points! And getting back on after throwing in the towel, that’s heroic! But I happen to know that Dana’s out there right now, putting the hammer down, even as I sit here waiting for the next round of nausea and the next mad dash to the toolit to puke my guts out. I’m thinking Saturday’s calling your name...

DANA (40.4 points, indoor – 2 hrs 5 min): NO GIFTS.

BRYAN: Good grief, the mother of all mother scores! Look at that score-per-hour number! Only two hours, and an hour and a half of it above the zone! Well, this is certainly going to be a battle. NICE RIDE, DUDE!

DANA: Thanks! I only wish it didn’t totally wreck me. At the dinner table afterward, I was almost too tired to chew. In fact, I became too tired to eat before I was really full. I just couldn’t stay vertical another minute, and collapsed to the floor on my back. Even typing this note is a serious chore.

GEOFF: Well shoot, you certainly are an ornery little cuss, aren’t you? Man, 40 points. Now of course I have no choice, I have to ride again. I only hope I can do something great. Man, nice effort! An ‘A’ for effort! Of course you’re going to dig deep tomorrow and I just know that you’re going to pull ahead again, and that on New Year’s Eve I’m going to have to make myself suffer again, and that it will be in vain. Oh well, I’ve never been so close to the victory before. I guess that’s worth something.

DANA: If you had any first-hand knowledge of how badly I suffered for these points, you wouldn’t be worried at all...

[SITUATION: DANA AHEAD BY 2 POINTS]

Saturday, Dec 31

GEOFF (39.7 points, indoor – 2 hrs 12 min): Well there it is, my final effort. I somehow outdid myself. At the time, it felt as if I had given it all I had. Yet I didn’t fall off the bike. Nor did I have to crawl around afterwards, I was still able to walk. Shoot, my lips didn’t even turn blue. Now I’m feeling like such a wimp. Why oh why didn’t I stay on just another ten minutes? I could have shattered through the magical 40 Point Barrier.

Oh well, I guess I should be proud of myself. It was a near death experience, after all. At one point my eyes filled up with tears and overflowed for almost no reason. At another point my pulse sailed up above 160, where it stayed for what felt like an hour, though in reality it was only a few minutes. I was sure that I’d died and been relieved of my suffering, and decided that I’d stay on the bike for the rest of the year [i.e., until midnight]. Then of course my pulse plummeted again, and it was back to reality.

So there it is, almost 40 points. Will it be enough? Will age and treachery overcome youth and skill? Or will Dana pull it off yet again? We’ll soon know. The ball’s back in your court. Punish me, young man!

DANA (pre-ride): MAN! I’m so impressed, I can’t even bring myself to call you a bastard. That’s amazing! Look at that score-per-hour, right on the heels of your 42-point MegaTour! I’d also like to point out that you took the world record for score-per-month of all time, besting my 400.2 mark from 2003! You also got the second-biggest week of all time (second to your own record, of course). Now, I’m going to swing my leg over the bike today, but I can’t imagine I’ll have the strength to even begin to convince myself that victory is possible. You’ll know soon . . . perhaps very soon, if things go badly enough for me! Nice ride, dude!

BRYAN: What an incredible finish! I’d say that you really wanted this one. An incredible week, an incredible month, shoot, an incredible year! Nice work. We’re all very proud of you over here!

DANA (10.6 points, indoor – 1 hr): Today’s ride was horrible, but at least it was brief. That is, it took me just an hour (actually 59:45, which was as close to an hour as I could get) to ascertain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there was no way I could score enough points to win. I’ve attached the final graph, because it tells a poignant tale. About 35 minutes into the workout, my spirits faltered and my pulse dropped to about 145. This angered me, and I hammered as hard as I could and finally crossed the [target] zone threshold. At this point I had all the grace of a fish flopping on the floor of a boat, being murdered with an ice pick. After about 90 seconds of this I was actually crying. I blew up, and my heart fell to just over 130.

I was getting ready to climb off the bike when I had my Tom Simpson moment. Remember, just before he died on Mount Ventoux, when his famous last words were “Put me back on my bike!”? That’s what I’m talking about. Reflecting on the absurdly short duration of my ride, and motivated by an equally absurd refusal to accept defeat, I decided to try to recover and go a bit longer.

And so, 48 minutes in I decided to try one more time to burst over the zone threshold, and (I foolishly hoped) somehow pin myself there [i.e., above my heart rate target zone—that is, redlined]. And as the graph shows, I actually did get it up there for awhile. When I finally detonated for good, which of course was inevitable, I decided to just keep hammering as much as I could despite the extreme, piercing, shattering pain. At this point I was uttering strange animal noises, somewhere between groans and screams but really more like yelps (given my lack of breath). And then something really strange happened: after maybe 30 seconds of this my heart rate began to soar. It got into the upper 160s and stayed there awhile, for about 45 seconds, and then suddenly I not only couldn’t pedal anymore, but couldn’t hold myself up on the bike. I crumpled into the handlebars and it was all over. Good thing I was on the [indoor] trainer or I’d have stacked!

So, not a great score, but it did get me above the 100-points-in-a-week barrier, for a personal best. It also got me above the prestigious 300-points-in-a-month barrier. It also brought my margin of loss down to less than a percent, which I have to be happy about. Best of all, it’s finally over.

BRYAN: Well shoot, Dana, my condolences. It was a valiant effort, I must say, as your last ride’s data attest. I believe you’re the better man for it, however, and I fear what you will do in the coming year. Did you realize that you shattered your previous total scores, as well as your best week? Very impressive...

GEOFF: Well Dana, your description of your final ride has filled my head with all sorts of thoughts. First of all, there’s respect and admiration for your grit and determination and your ability to torture yourself. My hat’s off to you! Then of course there’s the enormous sense of relief that you didn’t actually die trying. Erin would have killed me! There’s also the recognition of having been right there with you, having experienced exactly the same emotions. There’s a common bond here which I’m sure many people will never know. Oddly enough, I seem to be missing the thrill of victory. Maybe it just needs to sink in.

[FINAL SCORE: Geoff 2,941; Dana 2,914; Bryan 1,567.]

Final commentary

BRYAN: Gentlemen, nicely done. I am impressed and awed at your biking prowess. It’s a privilege to be crushed into oblivion by you.

DANA: I tried. That’s all I can say. Of course that’s not true—I can always say more. For example, nice job Geoff! I’m actually not that bummed about losing this year, because I lost to such a gritty opponent.

GEOFF: Well, I can scarcely believe that I actually won. I honestly thought it was impossible to beat Dana on the bike. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who made this victory possible, including the artists whose music made it possible to dig a bit deeper, my parents for providing me a genetic gift for determination, my equipment suppliers whose gear stood up to the task, the promoters and producers of this great sporting event, and of course my unwavering fellow competitors, whose dedication and guts are an inspiration to us all. So, what am I doing after the celebration? I’m goin’ to Di’neylan’!

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From the Archives - Brutal Bicycle Training Contest!

Introduction

For over a decade, every year I held a year-long bike training contest with my brothers Bryan and Geoff, and sometimes a few friends. It started January 1 and ended December 31 and was a points competition. We didn’t race head-to-head, nor did we compare times (like Strava does). Instead, we used the data from our heart rate monitors to score each ride in terms of duration and intensity.

(Here’s what these heart rate monitors looked like … fairly primitive by today’s standards, though they did offer data upload to a PC so we could crunch the numbers. Yes, that 39 on the screen is my heart rate … I was much fitter back then, and this was at rest.)

Intensity was determined by each rider’s average heart rate, and what percentage of his maximum heart rate this average represented. The closer to redline a guy rode, the higher his score was, based on an accelerator applied to his base score; i.e., total score =  [duration]*[avg HR]*[accelerator].

There was also a bonus based on the amount of time spent with the heart rate over the target zone (i.e., more than 85% of the max heart rate). This meant that whatever part of your ride was at absolute redline earned you big bonus points. In a nutshell, you scored high by hammering your ass off for as long and as hard as possible. (Downhills and other periods of low-intensity riding were chucked out by a special software algorithm Bryan coded.) So the real total score = [duration]*[avg HR]*[accelerator] + [bonus].

We tracked one another’s scores closely via a shared spreadsheet we would trade around via FTP. The score per month and running total were displayed graphically. We commented on each other’s rides, cheering and jeering, and often going off into the weeds with stories of family life. Often we’d review and update the spreadsheet several times a day.

(Here’s a photo of Bryan, Geoff, and me taken in 2006, during a training ride for the 2006 La Marmotte cyclosportif.)

The contest of 2005 was particularly close, with the winner not determined until the final day, December 31. This meant we spent our Christmas and New Year’s Eve holidays pedaling like madmen. It’s a wonder our wives put up with it.

This post gathers up our scores and comments, with a pretty graph at the end, so you can read the amazing story of our end-of-year death march. (If you’re not that into bicycling, fear not: there are some great side stories about our kids barfing, which ought to pique anybody’s interest.)

A final note: Geoff lives in The Netherlands, so he’s nine hours ahead. This meant I sometimes knew his most recent score before I rode, but not always. Sometimes we didn’t update our scores right away (either due to time constraints or a backhanded keep-‘em-guessing strategy).

Training contest showdown – December 2005

Saturday, Dec 24

GEOFF (35.8 points – indoor, 1 hr 52 min): Dana, I’ve taken your [virtual] yellow [leader’s] jersey! How ya like me now?!

DANA:  (14.1 points – 1 hr 21 min, 21 miles, 2,913 vertical feet of climbing): Doggone it! I didn’t see a score for you as of this afternoon, and thought maybe you’d taken the day off. So I went out and hammered (as well as I could, anyway), thinking I’d be padding my lead. Instead, I lost it! I just didn’t have it today … too many hard rides already this month!

I’m going to have a hard time putting up the big scores this week because I can no longer ride indoors. We’re having the kitchen painted, and though the painters put up a plastic sheet, it’s been punched full of holes, and the fumes have filled the office [where I ride the trainer]. I considered riding with a gas mask down there but that would get mighty gross. So I rode in the rain today. What a mess. My chamois was like a thick soggy pancake by the end, and my socks weighed a pound apiece. To dry out my shoes, I stuffed inside-out diapers in them (for lack of newspaper). It’s supposed to keep raining, so this next week will be a real test of my gumption! And I’ll be in Sacramento for Christmas so I won’t get any riding done…

BRYAN:  Man, Geoff, nice ride!

[SITUATION: GEOFF AHEAD BY 19 POINTS]

Monday, Dec 26

DANA (17.2 points – 1 hr 23 min, 21 mi, 2,976 vertical feet):  D’oh! We didn’t get back from Sac until this afternoon. I’d hoped for a longer ride but simply ran out of daylight. Man, I can see the contest slipping through my fingers! I live in fear of the next Geoff Albert MegaScore. And I didn’t even get the lead back today!

[SITUATION: GEOFF AHEAD BY 2 POINTS]

Tuesday, Dec 27

GEOFF (32.6 points – indoor, 2 hr 1 min):  Well that was painful, but I’m pleased. Man. I was practically hyperventilating for the full two hours. It was one of those struggles to keep the pulse up. Thinking about the rest of the week is terrifying. Such pain, such misery. It will not be fun. If I weren’t such a coward I’d just throw in the towel and announce that I won’t be riding any more this year. But I can’t, of course.

BRYAN:  Well, Geoff, shoot, it looks like you’re poised to take away my score-per-month record and there’s nothing I can do about it. On the other hand, you’ve earned it!

DANA:  (7.2 points – 1 hr 34 min, 20.6 mi, 2,920 vertical feet): Nooooooooooo! This was just what I was afraid of. I suffer long and hard to eke out another tiny advantage, and then Geoff comes along and obliterates it. [Here, I did my ride before seeing Geoff’s score, so when I went to post mine, I saw right away that he had hugely outscored me.]

That does it. I’m going to play this like a numbers game. No more strategizing about how much rest to take to feel best on training day. I’m going to have to ride every day, on the off chance that I’ll feel good. If I feel lousy, I fall off the bike and drown my sorrows in my own sweat. If I feel good, I go as long and hard as I can. Trouble is, tomorrow is my last day of vacation and I doubt I’ll feel very good, if today is any indication. Man, I’ve been on the sofa most of the day, between loads of laundry. My legs feel like they’ve been actually injured, like somebody shut them in a car door. Man o man. I felt SO lousy on this ride. I had big ambitions, too. I ate breakfast, mixed up two big bottles of Gatorade, two Clif bars, clothes for any weather . . . I was going to ride for hours and get a shock-and-awe score. I figured I’d finished yesterday’s ride with something still in the tank and would feel good. The horror! I just didn’t have it. I felt slightly less than mediocre going up Spruce, fairly lousy on South Park, and absolutely abysmal on Lomas Cantadas. There were times on that climb when my bike would come almost to a complete stop at the top of the pedal stroke. I went from intending to conquer the world to simply hoping I could limp home. Even my arms were tired.

In other news, just before bed last night Lindsay had sudden, violent bout of projectile vomiting. Her aim was uncanny:  she sprayed down a large pile of silk sweaters, fanned her blast over to our goose down pillows, nailed the down comforter and duvet, coated a bunch of clothing, and created a huge slip hazard on the hardwood floor. Never has such a small person created such a huge amount of laundry in so little time. Plus we had the bedroom windows open due to the paint fumes, so without that comforter I froze the rest of the night. I dreamed that I was riding with soaking wet chamois and tights. D’oh.

BRYAN:  You’ve got to love those little vomiters! Last night at the dinner table (our family has been afflicted to varying degree with illness) Jamey announced that she felt like she was going to barf. So we told her to go to the bathroom. Then we heard her heaves—they sounded like those of a full-grown man! That little angel hit the toilet with every blast, and there were four of them! So we tucked her in with her bucket. Poor little fellow, with her sheet-white face...

Last night Lydia was complaining of some serious stomach problems and today she’s hurling hard. She even threw up out the window of her uncle’s car, spattering all down the side of the car! This was in heavy traffic, no less.

GEOFF:  Good grief! I’m counting myself very lucky that I haven’t had to clean up vomit in a while! The last time was when Max didn’t make it to the tiled bathroom in time, stopping mid-stride to empty his system on the brand new carpeting upstairs. I couldn’t help but grin as I was scraping it out with a spatula, just like Mom used to do. I don’t know how I got the vomit patrol task, but I did.

DANA:  Speaking of Max, I chatted with him the other day, international long-distance, and bragged that I ate roll-mops [raw herring wrapped around a dill pickle spear] as my recovery food after a cold, wet ride. I was bragging, of course, but he unknowingly deflated my wimpy American swagger instantly by asking, “Was it yummy?”  It hadn’t occurred to me that a food that gives one (wussy American) man culinary bragging rights can be another (cool European) man’s (well, boy’s) delicacy...

BRYAN (20.6 points – indoor, 1 hr 3 min):  I’ll take it. It won’t help much, but it was a good ride, all things considered. It sure hurt to ride the trainer. I had forgotten how much suffering and drudgery it is. In fact, I wondered for a few minutes why I’m even doing this…

DANA:  Not bad! Your score-per-hour is stellar, as always. Did John work out with you?

BRYAN:  Nope, just solo. I think he was feeling a bit ill and went to bed early. It was a late-night ride. Now I’m feeling sick too! My belly’s all queasy and I feel like I should be puking, but I’m not—yet. Fine by me, but I sure didn’t feel like mounting up last night. I was hoping to ride every day through 12/31, but it’s not going to happen.

GEOFF:  You know, I’m feeling a bit ill myself. My head’s heavy and hurts, like one of those colds coming on. Of course it sure doesn't help that I only got five hours of sleep last night…

[SITUATION: GEOFF AHEAD BY 27.5 POINTS]

Wednesday, Dec 28

DANA (30.4 points – 3 hours, 47 miles, 5,975 vertical feet):  Boy, this one hurt. I psyched myself up as much as possible first, reading a Tour de France book beforehand while waiting for my NoDoz to kick in. I achieved some good time-above-zone early on, by suffering hugely, and then about halfway through I started to fall apart. Man. I felt every pedal stroke today. Each one was so hard, I was able to count them. There were 14,387. Oh, such horrible suffering. Every climb the Berkeley hills can throw at a guy—South Park, Fish Ranch, Claremont, South Pinehurst, Pinehurst, El Toyonal, and Lomas Cantadas. I’m glad I took the lead, but of course it’s another of those ahead-by-a-hair deals that will certainly be crushed out like a cigarette tomorrow.

I was absolutely destroyed at the end of this ride. Erin saw me come in the door and gasped at my blue lips. (It wasn’t that cold out; I think it was the problem I had after the 2003 La Marmotte, when my body was having trouble reoxygenating.)  Boys, you know you’re hurting when you have to sit down in the shower.

BRYAN:  Remember how I was feeling sick, like I should be booting, but I wasn’t? Well, I guess it just took a little while to come on, but boy did it! It’s like a hydrant! Wet cleanup in aisle 3!

DANA:  Dude ... what a grind!

[SITUATION: DANA AHEAD BY 3.5 POINTS]

To be continued…

For the thrilling conclusion to this barbaric, ego-fueled struggle, tune in to Part II, coming to albertnet on December 31!

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Product Review - Inside Ride E-motion Rollers

Introduction

This isn’t one of those consumer-oriented blogs dedicated to reviewing products—which is a shame in some ways, because if it were I’d probably reach a lot more people.  (A post last year in which I bagged on a teakettle) was very popular.)  That said, if you’re in the market for a set of rollers and would consider the Inside Ride E-motion setup, you’ve totally come to the right place (and may want to focus on the second half of this post—search on the text “What makes these rollers different” and start from there).  On the other hand, if you don’t even know or care what rollers are, but enjoy a good laugh at somebody else’s expense, you’ve also come to the right place (and will want to focus on the first half of this post).

Rough start

I got these E-motion rollers via a friend who has no use for them anymore, and I was looking forward to trying them out.  I already own regular rollers and you can read here about some of the difficulties I had jerry-rigging resistance on them, because in this one small area of my life I actually need more resistance.  What’s worse, with the old rollers I kept getting flat tires, which makes zero sense, being the bike equivalent of shoes whose soles spontaneously fail due to contact with carpet.  My solution to this flat tire problem was to ride outdoors, which has become less attractive as winter (albeit the mild California version) has set in.

My first ride on the E-motion rollers started off very badly.  First of all, I didn’t have the owner’s manual and was too lazy to look online for it—so when adjusting the wheelbase setting I just winged it.  The process is actually completely intuitive for anybody with a cool head, but I hadn’t ridden in like a week, was totally stressed out for various reasons, and was impatient.  So I fiddled with the knobs quickly and recklessly and cut my finger.  (Due to age, I guess, my skin has become very flimsy, somehow combining the soft delicateness of moss with the dry, brittle, diaphanous fragility of baked phyllo.)

I got the bike and the fan set up and then, because I cannot ride indoors without music, I spent 20 minutes in vain looking for my MP3 player.  I never did find it and had to use my smartphone, which I hung from the ceiling (to protect it from sweat).  Then I started riding but my heart rate monitor wouldn’t work.  I cannot ride indoors without knowing my heart rate.  I had to troubleshoot.  I am not the kind of person, particularly when I’m stressed out, who can just move on.  It isn’t in me.

I went looking for my daughter’s heart rate monitor.  I gave up after 10 minutes.  I did find her HR monitor chest strap.  I didn’t want to adjust the strap to fit me because it’s really hard to dial those in just right.  So I had to hold the strap against my chest with one hand, which is awkward because I had to stretch out my hand so both electrodes would contact my skin.  The HR monitor still wouldn’t pick up my heart rate, but when I walked across the room it started working.  WTF?!

The troubleshooting was exacerbated because the HR monitor is also a bike computer, and won’t always show the heart rate if the wheel isn’t spinning.  It will show it for a little while after the wheel stops spinning, but I don’t know what this interval is.  I really needed to actually ride the new rollers while holding the strap across my chest.  Super-awkward.  Impossible, in fact.  I felt like a doomed, hapless idiot.

I decided to try a new battery in my heart rate monitor strap.  There’s a special tool needed to remove the battery cap, and I spent 5 minutes finding it.  Then I dropped it.  I spent another 5 minutes looking for it, in vain.  (It’s small and black, kind of a “household camo” form factor.)  Between my failing eyesight, which is infuriating, and the fact that I was already furious, I gave up looking for the little tool.  I did grasp the absurdity of this, which increased my fury.  (The tool did turn up a week later, in a box of Clif bars on a high shelf in the kitchen.  A mystery, as I hadn’t gone near the Clif bar box that morning.)

I spent another 10 minutes looking for my backup battery cap tool, which I did, amazingly, find.  I removed the battery and tested it:  it had a full charge.  I spent another 3 minutes looking for a new battery anyway.  Amazingly, the individualized packaging on my backup batteries had failed en masse so the new batteries and their defective packaging were all mixed up with merely new-ish batteries.  I tested all the batteries and installed the best one.  No change:  the heart rate monitor still wouldn’t pick up within 6 feet of the new rollers.

I needed to determine if the magnetic field generated by the resistance device on the new rollers was interfering with the heart rate monitor’s signals.  This would presumably only happen when the bike is in motion.  So I decided I had to use the HR monitor in hiking mode, so that I could compare its performance when merely seated on the bike vs. while pedaling on it, without needing to worry about the HR monitor’s pointless idiosyncrasy of ignoring HR signals when the bike is stopped.  But hiking mode only works when the monitor is mounted to the wrist strap.  There are two wrist straps in this household:  mine and my daughter’s.  I looked for 15 minutes for either one of these.  My rage was so extreme by this point that I was almost literally blind.  Finally I managed to stop racing around peeking under things and just thought for a moment, and realized that my strap would be wrapped around the handlebars of my backup bike from the last time, many months ago, that I rode rollers.  There it was!  My satisfaction at finding it was considerably reduced by absurd amount of time I’d spent on the search.

I tried the HR monitor in hiking mode.  Even when just sitting on the bike, on the rollers, the monitor would not pick up my heart rate.  The crux, it seemed, was that the HR monitor just didn’t like my new rollers.  Which is a problem.  It seemed that no matter how much these rollers might outperform my old ones, it wouldn’t matter because I need that heart rate feedback or I’ll just loaf.  It’s human nature (mine, at least).

At this point I arrived at a crossroads.  If I didn’t succeed in solving the HR monitor issue, I’d have to eat the sunk cost of my hunt:  that is, I’d have to concede that I’d spent like an hour futzing with all this (in addition to the 20 minutes looking for my MP3 player and another 10 or so suiting up, digging the fan out of the garage, finding the extension cord, etc.) and would have nothing to show for my efforts.  On the other hand, if I spent one more minute of my precious weekend dinking with the HR monitor, I was probably going to blow.  I had to get on that bike, period.

But first I decided I needed to do one more thing:  look for help on the Internet.  How long could that take, right?  Alas, no Google search produced any results whatsoever.  I am evidently the only person who had ever had problems using his HR monitor with these rollers.  I did learn from the manufacturer’s FAQ that, due to the little wheels positioned at either side of each roller drum, “It’s not possible to ride off the drums.  You can try as hard as you want and it won’t happen.”  In my enraged state, I took this as some kind of dare.  A double-dog dare, in fact.

I climbed on, started riding, noted again the infuriating absence of heart rate data, started riding harder, and then steered my front wheel into the little guide wheel at the edge of the drum.  The tire touched it, started it spinning, and the bike just stayed in position.  So yeah, the guide wheel works.  But “it’s not possible” to ride off the drums?  And “you can try as hard as you want”?  I hadn’t yet tried as hard as I wanted.  So I started slamming the front wheel violently into the guide wheel.  I increased my speed and tried again.  On the 4th or 5th try I had so much sideways momentum I kind of high-sided.  What is high-siding?  Imagine riding on a rain-slippery road or trail and turning so hard that the tire starts to slide out—but then it suddenly catches, and flips you like a pancake.  That’s high-siding.  I basically flipped my bike right off the rollers.  I managed to stick the landing, but in the process of this crazily abrupt dismount I clotheslined myself on my headphone cord (because my smartphone was hanging from the ceiling, remember?).

This was the proprietary cord of my $300 Bose noise-canceling headphones, and it was now ruined.  This angered me.  And if memory serves, I had been kind of angry already.  (Is my comic understatement working here?)  I had to find some other headphones.  After 5 minutes I found some, remounted the bike, and then discovered that the headphones’ cord was too short.  So I hunted around for my headphone extension cord (yes, I actually have one) and tried that, but it was too long, and no scheme I could contrive to take up the slack would work (since my brain was melting down due to anger).  So I decided to put the smartphone in my jersey pocket, which meant finding a plastic bag to put it in.

Finally I got back going.  As you can see, I began my first E-motion roller ride with a level of fury surely unrivaled in history.  It would take a pretty special product to earn a glowing review under these circumstances.  Not since Richard III set about wooing the widow of the man he’d just murdered had a deck been stacked so unfavorably.

What makes these rollers different?

Regular rollers consist of a rigid frame that holds the three drums.  Riding these rollers requires a fair amount of balance (significantly more than riding a bike on the road).  The bike doesn’t automatically stay straight so you have to kind of steer to keep it more or less in the middle of the roller.  If you drift too far to either side you’ll go off the drum, which causes a very abrupt dismount that, while not terribly dangerous, is unpleasant and breaks your stride.

This difficulty increases if you contrive some kind of resistance and really start hammering.  If your body rocks or bounces at all, the bike wants to creep forward on the rollers and is destabilized.  Riding out of the saddle is possible on traditional rollers, but it’s really tricky going from sitting to standing without pitching forward.  Rocking the bike back and forth, meanwhile, is basically impossible. 

Anybody who tells you that riding rollers is a cinch is probably accustomed to riding them without resistance.  Riding rollers this way is pretty easy—but also pointless.  I have found, over the last year or two of riding rollers with resistance, that my back gets sore, probably because I am a bit tense and having to keep my upper body too still.  Moreover, I have really missed being able to ride out of the saddle in a natural way.

The E-motion rollers are different.  The drums still mount to a rigid frame, but this frame doesn’t sit right on the floor.  Instead, it rides a second frame (that does sit on the floor).  There is “float” between these two frames, so the rigid, spring-loaded top frame can move forward and backward.  So even if you are hammering so hard your form is crap, and your upper body is rocking up and down, the bike is stable, and the ride smooth and natural, with the rollers’ floating mechanism taking up all the slop.  Moreover, there are these smaller-diameter guide rollers positioned fore and aft of the rear wheel, which come into play when you stand up on the pedals.  The bike moves quite a bit when you stand up, but then the rear wheel hits the little guide roller, which shifts the floating frame forward, again taking up the slack so your bike doesn’t leave the rollers behind and crash into your fan (which has in fact happened to me with my old setup).

The floating frame also makes it possible to really shove on the pedals when out of the saddle, and to rock the bike from side to side like you would on the road.  In short, riding these rollers is just like real riding, except the air around you is warm and dry instead of cold and wet, and you don’t have to restrict your training to daylight hours.  (The other difference is that it’s still not as interesting as real riding, but music can help with that.)

These rollers are so easy to ride, I haven’t suffered my usual back pain when riding them.  With the old rollers I could ride no-handed, even with some resistance, but doing so made me a bit nervous; with these new ones, I not only can ride no-handed with ease, but when the zipper of my jersey got jammed, I was able to sit up and un-jam it while riding.

Here’s a video showing how well the E-motion rollers work.  This isn’t footage of some specially trained stunt double with impeccable form, either … it’s your randomly selected blogger, who likes to mosh big gears, doesn’t do yoga on the side, and isn’t overly concerned with being super-smooth.  Go ahead and view this video in full-screen mode and look at how much the top frame floats on the bottom one.

So … these rollers really work?

Yes, they really work.  They’re amazing, in fact.  The innovative design absolutely does achieve everything I’ve described above.  Also, the drums are really quiet, much more so than my old aluminum rollers which tended to “sing” at high speeds.  (Apparently these E-motion drums are aluminum as well, which is better than plastic because it’s more durable and has a more perfectly round cross-section.  But these are coated somehow which I think is why they’re so quiet.)  The magnetic resistance also works really well and is silent.

It is very rare, I’ve found, for one manufacturer’s product to be so obviously superior to every competing product on the market.  These rollers are such a huge step forward, I was almost laughing with delight.  This reaction is particularly noteworthy considering how enraged I was prior to riding these for the first time.  (If you didn’t read the first half of this review, maybe it’s time to go do that.)  Because by this point I hated everyone and everything in the universe, including myself, I perversely wanted to find fault with the E-motions but the fact is, I could not.  These rollers are a total game-changer.  At the end of my workout, I was in a really, really good mood because I was (and am) so stoked to own such a sweet set of rollers.

I don’t think I’ve been so completely satisfied with a product in 30 years (since I bought my first English-made Simplex teakettle, whose perfection is matched only by the utter uselessness and almost criminal crappiness of its modern Chinese successor … but that’s another story).

Is there any downside to the E-motion rollers?

The main problem with this product is that it has, for most people, no practical use.  The vast majority of people lack the desire and/or skill to ride rollers, and/or don’t have the psychological stamina (or is it mere tolerance of tedium?) to train indoors regularly.  Rollers in general are a total niche product.  There’s something almost Quixotic about setting out to produce the best rollers on the planet … kind of like if somebody decided the state of the art in steel-toed, waterproof, chainmail-reinforced, Internet-connected, antibacterial golf shoes was in need of an overhaul.  Of course this isn’t really a criticism of the Inside Ride E-motion rollers; it’s more of a critique of rollers in general, and of my fellow man.

There’s also the matter of price.  These rollers are about 50% more expensive than the second-most-expensive brand on the market, Al Kreitler.  The E-motions would be a pretty decadent purchase in most cases, given that they probably wouldn’t get much use.  On the other hand, for a serious cyclist with the tenacity to actually do a lot of training indoors, who spends all kinds of money on lighter wheels, fancy clothing, and other state-of-the-art gear, the price of the E-motions is reasonable.  (Good luck making this case with your significant other, though.)

These rollers do not fold up, so it would be hard to take them in your car to warm up before a race or before riding the track.  But who among us doesn’t have an old stationary trainer for that purpose?

If you think I’m going to complain about the tendency of these rollers to jam heart rate monitor signals, I have good news there as well.  Oddly, though I didn’t get consistent heart rate data during my first workout, I discovered I could spot-check my heart rate by standing up on the pedals.  (My theory is that riding out of the saddle moved the HR transmitter far enough away from the rollers’ magnetic resistance unit to work properly.)  I made peace with the idea that I wouldn’t have average HR, max HR, time-above-HR-target-zone, and other data to sift through after my roller rides, because everything else about these rollers is so kickass.  And then, upon riding them a second time a few days later, I was surprised to see that the HR monitor worked perfectly.  Two more flawless rides confirmed that the HR monitor problem was just a fluke thing, like the missing battery-cap tool.  Sometimes life is like that.

There is only one other possible downside to these rollers.  I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, where we occasionally have earthquakes.  If an earthquake were to happen during a workout, when I’m rocking out to my workout megamix via noise-canceling headphones, the E-motions’ floating frame might be so effective that I fail to notice the earthquake, which could put me in some kind of danger. (As you can see, you have to work pretty hard to find fault with this product.)

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Biketronics

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Introduction

This isn’t a post about the new electronic bicycle shifting system from Shimano. Electronic shifting is not the future of the sport, nor is it anything new. Mavic took a fruitless stab at it in the ‘90s, and in 2003 Campagnolo did too. Electronic shifting was a dumb idea then and it’s a dumb idea now. Why spend many hundreds of dollars to shave grams off your bike, only to spend thousands more adding needless complexity and a battery pack?! Electronic shifting is a solution looking for a problem. Enough said.

Nor is this an essay about two-way radios in professional cycling, and the debate over whether to ban them. That’s an interesting topic, but I doubt I could shed new light on it; without access to the riders in the pro peloton, I can only speculate on their perspective. (Doubtless some appreciate the radios because they remove the stress of having to figure out race tactics, while others chafe at the idea that they’ve been hired from the neck down.)

This is, rather, a post about the electronics more commonly used by mainstream cyclists: bike computers, heart rate monitors, power meters, altimeters, and GPS devices. In addition to some personal anecdotes, I will share the results (comprising 52 responses in all) of a survey I sent to my cycling pals on this topic.

Early devices

The first cycling data-gathering device I remember was the Huret Multito odometer my friend Aaron had back in 1982. It was actually pre-electronic: a clunky little black box mounted at the front axle, with a little rubber ring that looped around a tiny wheel, like a pulley, that rotated with the hub. Its readout was like a miniature version of a car's odometer.

The main purpose of the odometer was bragging rights: Aaron and I were only thirteen and doing our first century rides; seeing that thing tick over from 99.9 to 100 was pretty exciting. The rest of the time the Multito was a bit of a nuisance because the little rubber band was always falling off.

The first proper bike computer I remember was the Avocet 20, which came out in 1985. It was black, pretty small, and had a recessed display that tended to pool up with sweat. The squishy, rubbery round buttons had a pronounced click to them. The Avocet was fun to use, but this fun came at a price: when I’d ride with my friend Peter, he’d use the speed data to help drive up our pace. I’d be sucking his wheel for dear life, longing for that moment when he’d pull off so I could finally slack off and rest at the front, but as soon as he got on my wheel he’d yell, “Don’t let our speed drop below thirty!” (Maybe it wasn’t actually thirty. It felt like thirty.)

Lots of bike computers came out after that, and new ones hit the market all the time. They were and are handy devices, but their usefulness only goes so far. Perhaps this was why the coach of the Boulder-area 7-Eleven junior team, Dale Stetina, was no fan of them. (Dale was not a technophobe; in fact, he had eight-speed gearing in ’83 before anybody else did, having ground down the body of his freehub to make room for an extra cog.) At the start line of the 1986 Iron Horse Bicycle Classic Durango-to-Silverton road race, Dale chatted casually with one if his riders while reaching down and suddenly ripping the wires out of the poor guy’s computer mount. I thought this would hamper the guy’s ability to pace himself, but during that race I learned for myself how useless the mileage data really was. The race was only forty-seven miles, but featured almost 5,600 feet of climbing.

Fancier stuff

An altimeter suddenly seemed like the more useful device to have, and a few years later my boss at the bike shop loaned me his for the summer. It was, to my knowledge, the first bike altimeter on the market, made in Germany by Ciclosport. I’m guessing that cheap, small barometers weren’t around yet because this used a very strange alternative mechanism: within the computer’s casing, a dangling wire measured the angle of bike vs. the ground, and since the computer knew the speed of the bike, it could calculate the vertical gain. Setup was really tricky: you had to use a level to make sure the bike was absolutely horizontal in order to calibrate the device. And in practice the altimeter was almost useless, because rocking the bike in a sprint made the wire fly all over the place, so the device would go nuts and tally up several hundred feet of utterly fictitious vertical gain.

The next big thing for me was the heart rate monitor, which helped me with my weakest cycling event, the individual time trial. These races were boring, and I was lazy, and I’d actually forget to hammer. I’d be plowing along, and then my mind would wander, and I’d be in la-la land for awhile, not hammering nearly hard enough, until I came to my senses—but by then it was much too late. With a heart rate monitor, this focus became a snap. Knowing my anaerobic threshold (i.e., the peak heart rate I could sustain before going anaerobic), I’d just peg my heart rate there for the duration of the event. This really improved my results.

Heart rate monitors also help keep you from going too hard in a long event. Going by feel doesn’t always work, as I learned when I totally overcooked my first effort at La Marmotte, a cyclosportif race in France. My brain had been so completely marinated in adrenaline, I decided to ignore the sky-high numbers on my heart rate monitor. I guess I thought I was like Luke Skywalker and could trust my instincts over the instruments. That didn’t work so well: I had a total core meltdown halfway through the race. Three years later, I heeded the heart rate monitor, and though it seemed I was loafing for the first two passes, the numbers didn’t lie and I paced myself much more wisely. Nowadays, people use power meters in much the same fashion, with similar benefit.

Clearly, electronics are useful for bike racers. That said, I only race here and there (e.g., this race and this one) and yet I use these devices more often, and more assiduously, then ever. You may think I’m just a nerd; if so, I’m in good company, as I learned by surveying my friends’ devotion to these cool toys.

The survey

Most of the guys I sent my survey to are either current or former racers; all are riders who could hang with my bike club’s weekend rides; ten are either current or former Cat 1s or pros. (It’s the same group I surveyed for my leg shaving essay.) I set out to discover how many use these devices, how they use them, and to what extent this data affects them psychologically when they’re riding.

Here’s a breakdown of the 52 respondents to my online questionnaire, in terms of racing experience. (Click to enlarge graph.)

Keeping in mind that only 17% of my respondents still race regularly, check out how many use electronic devices:

Racing isn’t everything, of course, and it’s perfectly reasonable that a non-racer who wishes to increase his or her fitness would use performance data from these instruments as part of a sophisticated, methodical workout program. But I had a hunch most of the guys I ride with—strong though they are—don’t adhere to a formal training regimen. I asked them what best describes their approach to riding, and here’s how they responded:

A question presents itself: if we don’t follow a strict training program, why bother with heart-rate and/or power data? Why pay attention to average speed or rate of vertical gain? Could it be that the minimal weight of these devices makes them analogous to the windshield ice scraper we Californians keep in our cars—seldom used but occasionally handy? Or perhaps it’s just smooth-talking bike shop salesmen getting us to buy accessories we don’t really need?

Not the case: the survey respondents seem to get a lot of use out of these devices. I asked the question “How much attention do you pay to your electronic device during your ride?” and offered up, as one of my multiple-choice responses, “I don’t look at it at all and arguably shouldn’t even own this device.” You won’t see that response in the graph below, because nobody selected it.

Okay, suppose we continue to play the devil’s advocate (or “devil’s avocado,” as I like to call it) and question what features actually get used. What if all theses guys are only checking the clock function (as one rider commented)? Perhaps the acid test of how truly hungry we are for data is whether we upload device data to our PCs to analyze post-ride. Here’s how that inquiry shook out:

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A bunch of nerds?

That’s pretty remarkable: fully 60% of the device-using riders (21 in all) either upload this data or wish they could, and 69% have purchased instruments sophisticated enough to do this. As a group, we’re clearly highly tuned into ride and performance data, even though the majority of us don’t follow a formal training program. What is going on here? Shouldn’t we all just put the bike computer & heart rate monitor aside, lift our heads up, and enjoy our surroundings and the speed—the things that got us into cycling in the first place?

Well, that’s a nice idea, but let's look hard at what actually did get us into cycling. I’m sure we’d like to think of ourselves as purists, but really, an awful lot of cyclists, including myself, are tantalized by the cool gear. We shouldn’t be too ashamed of this, and I harbor no ill will toward those who continually upgrade their equipment even if they don’t use it that much. (After all, wealthy enthusiasts—the ones who actually pay full retail—are the financial backbone of the sport, keeping worthy bike-related companies afloat.)

Bicycles are beautiful machines, after all. I started racing largely because I wanted a cool racing bike, and I wanted to be worthy of it. In this sense, it was about the bike. Eventually, after several years, this finally shifted, and the bike became what it should be: a tool to serve the sport, not the other way around. But even now, even for a guy like me who’s still on 9-speed, the “cool stuff” legacy continues, in a dampened mode. I'll never outgrow it.

Why so popular?

But this still doesn’t explain the popularity of these electronics. They’re just gadgets, after all, and will never be as important to us as our bikes. So why are they so prevalent? I think part of it is that these devices are just one more way to get us to go hard. Especially as we age, they can be part of the feedback loop that keeps us focused during a workout. To see if others felt the same way I do about this, I asked a final survey question: “Do your device’s real-time performance data (e.g., power, speed, heart rate, stopwatch time up a climb) influence you psychologically during your rides?” Here are the responses:

There you have it: of those who use these devices, 54% (21 riders) are stoked by good numbers. I suppose this phenomenon is no different than a diet that has you count your calories: measuring performance holds us accountable to ourselves. Especially when I’m riding alone, little contests against myself or the mountain (how fast can I go up it? how hard can I run my heart? how many watts can I sustain?) keep things lively.

The downside of data

The flip side is what I’ll call the “data slave” effect: watching these instruments can become a pointless addiction, like crosswords or cheap, plot-driven novels. I should know: for me, watching my heart rate is like constantly checking my watch when I’m in an airport—a reflex whose repetition is excessive. I acknowledge the absurdity of this behavior, but hey, why not indulge in data obsession, if it’s not hurting anybody?

Well, the numbers themselves are harmless, but it’s possible to read too much into them. Performance data seem to answer the fundamental question “Am I any good?” (or, for us ageing cyclists, “Am I still any good?”). We run into trouble when their answer is “Hell no!” As 13 respondents (a third of electronics users) indicate, lousy numbers can frustrate or annoy us.

Rationally, I understand that on a bad day I’m not going to post impressive heart rate or power numbers, but at such times I can’t help feeling like my instrument is taunting me. This can have the demoralizing effect of turning a trivial circumstance—tired legs—into something that taints or even ruins my ride. (Sneer at me if you want: a dozen of my pals have the same experience.) One respondent commented, “If my numbers look slow I go even slower and enjoy myself,” which is wise; of course, bike racers, myself included, often aren’t.

The weather channel

To help myself cast off the “data slave” shackles, I’ve come up with a technique I call the “weather channel.” If your device tells the temperature (I think most do), put the display in temperature mode. (If your device has dual displays, put the second display in clock mode.) Temperature is the perfect statistic for lousy days: after all, you have no control over the weather, and it doesn’t say anything about you. As corporate blatherers are so fond of saying, “It is what it is.”

The best thing about this arrangement is that every time you reflexively glance at your bike computer, you get a reminder of how trivial ride data ultimately is. The non-verbal equivalent of “How am I doing?” is answered by the non-verbal equivalent of “Who cares?” And maybe, bit by bit, this practice can help wean the data-obsessed among us from our fixation on these (albeit useful) electronic devices.