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I finally picked up a new trainer this week. I had previously been using a Travel Track Century Fluid trainer which was a nice enough trainer, but only lasted about 3 or 4 years before the resistance unit failed.
So after looking online for several weeks I settled on the Kurt Kinetic Road Machine fluid trainer. I had it narrowed down to that and the Cyclops II fluid trainer. I liked the sealed fluid chamber design on the Kinetic and I also found a Kinetic that also came with a power computer, which has turned out to be a pretty cool training tool.
They have the computer and trainer calibrated for wattage to within 3% of a Powertap power meter. Its most reliable on the trainer, but is also fairly accurate on a flat road with minimal wind, as they factored in body frontal surface area, wind resistance and road resistance into their formula constants. For the math geeks out there, the formula they use is : P = (5.244820) * S + (0.01968) * S3. And to think that this whole time I thought it would be Speed to the fourth power, and not the third power. Silly me.
So I took it for a spin last night while watching tv. it has a very nice, smooth feel to it and is much more quiet than my last two trainers.
The power function was a lot of fun to work out with. It made the 45 minutes only seem like 90 minutes, instead of the standard 3 hours that it typically feels like.
It was very humbling to see my numbers though, considering some the numbers that I've seen coming from the top pros. My max power reading during a couple of short seated sprints was 542 watts, and my overall average for a 45 minute ride was 173 watts. Lance, Floyd and company can sustain 500-600 watts for an hour long climb and the sprinters are up well over 1200 watts.
So after looking online for several weeks I settled on the Kurt Kinetic Road Machine fluid trainer. I had it narrowed down to that and the Cyclops II fluid trainer. I liked the sealed fluid chamber design on the Kinetic and I also found a Kinetic that also came with a power computer, which has turned out to be a pretty cool training tool.
They have the computer and trainer calibrated for wattage to within 3% of a Powertap power meter. Its most reliable on the trainer, but is also fairly accurate on a flat road with minimal wind, as they factored in body frontal surface area, wind resistance and road resistance into their formula constants. For the math geeks out there, the formula they use is : P = (5.244820) * S + (0.01968) * S3. And to think that this whole time I thought it would be Speed to the fourth power, and not the third power. Silly me.
So I took it for a spin last night while watching tv. it has a very nice, smooth feel to it and is much more quiet than my last two trainers.
The power function was a lot of fun to work out with. It made the 45 minutes only seem like 90 minutes, instead of the standard 3 hours that it typically feels like.
It was very humbling to see my numbers though, considering some the numbers that I've seen coming from the top pros. My max power reading during a couple of short seated sprints was 542 watts, and my overall average for a 45 minute ride was 173 watts. Lance, Floyd and company can sustain 500-600 watts for an hour long climb and the sprinters are up well over 1200 watts.
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