bike on a treadmill

Oct 1, 12 16:06

Post #1 of 194 (22053 views)

Okay, here's a crazy idea I've been jonesing to try for years: get rid of the trainer and roller, at least as a daily training tool, and try placing the bike on a sufficiently long treadmill.

Before all you naysayers claim it won't work, let me refer you to youtube and other corners of the internets to prove you wrong. There a few successful bike on treadmill riders and a few people goofing off and getting hurt. In addition, bona fide bicycle treadmills have been made by emotion as I recall. From what I can gather you want a cage of some type to keep you from riding off any edge of the belt. After that you're good.

My thoughts are that it would be fairly simple to set up in your basement, you'd have a nice long treadmill for run training, you could implement erg mode by inclining the mill at a given angle and run it at a set speed, and you'd have the balancing entertainment/practice that you get with rollers. A little math shows that you want one that can provide a pretty good incline and a high speed in order to elicit a reasonable power output. It would still be pretty useless for top end work, but great for ftp type stuff.

So I guess my questions are has anyone tried it and what do you think? For what it's worth, I can't seriously try this for a few more years.

Re: bike on a treadmill [corneliused] [ In reply to ]

Oct 1, 12 16:18

Post #2 of 194 (22020 views)

As you say its been done but the commercially available one I've seen is very very expensive. You need a much faster motor and a larger size. It has to be capable of well over normal bike speeds because you don't have wind resistance, so $150-300 for rollers or $30000 for a treadmill.

I just don't see the justification.

Styrrell

Re: bike on a treadmill [corneliused] [ In reply to ]

Oct 1, 12 16:18

Post #3 of 194 (22019 views)

Don't most treadmills top out at 16-18kph? Good luck finding one that will go over 40kph. Also, not sure why you need a cage. People on rollers don't need a cage.

Re: bike on a treadmill [Philosoraptor] [ In reply to ]

Oct 1, 12 16:25

Post #4 of 194 (21989 views)

Here's the thing, many treadmills can go up to 15%. How long can you do 15 mph at 15 %? It seems to me that it could be a good workout. Imagine that you'd had enough 15 mph at 15%, and you involuntarily slowed down a bit. What do you think would happen then? I'm going with you'd be glad you had a cage. And what I mean by cage is a bar that would hit your backside before the wheel fell off the back of the treadmill. Also the same could be achieved with a rope, as well as many other solutions.

Now rollers on the other hand cradle the rear wheel with 2 rollers. As such the bike has to lift up slightly in order to come forward or backward out of the rollers. Not so with the treadmill.

Re: bike on a treadmill [styrrell] [ In reply to ]

Oct 1, 12 16:32

Post #5 of 194 (21950 views)

In fact, if you put a fan at the front of a treadmill it would blow back on you. Maybe something like this:http://clearanceman.com/...-fan-very-large-175/ This would add to the amount of work that you'd have to do, though you could no longer calculate power required quite so simply. Definitely worth the trade off.

I'm really thinking of of someone reappropriating a high quality running treadmill. And like I said, 15 mph at 15% is a significant amount of power and achievable with a high end running treadmill.

Re: bike on a treadmill [corneliused] [ In reply to ]

Oct 1, 12 16:33

Post #6 of 194 (21942 views)

corneliused wrote:

Here's the thing, many treadmills can go up to 15%. How long can you do 15 mph at 15 %? It seems to me that it could be a good workout. Imagine that you'd had enough 15 mph at 15%, and you involuntarily slowed down a bit. What do you think would happen then? I'm going with you'd be glad you had a cage. And what I mean by cage is a bar that would hit your backside before the wheel fell off the back of the treadmill. Also the same could be achieved with a rope, as well as many other solutions.

Now rollers on the other hand cradle the rear wheel with 2 rollers. As such the bike has to lift up slightly in order to come forward or backward out of the rollers. Not so with the treadmill.

I actually think this would work fine as a workout machine, but in terms of practicalness, it's a total fail. Especially considering you can get the same workout on a normal trainer or roller+resistance just by cranking up the effort.

Re: bike on a treadmill [corneliused] [ In reply to ]

Oct 1, 12 16:34

Post #7 of 194 (21937 views)

Boasson Hagen does a wheelie on Sky's mill here.

Re: bike on a treadmill [corneliused] [ In reply to ]

Oct 1, 12 16:37

Post #8 of 194 (21926 views)

please post a video of you trying this!!!

Re: bike on a treadmill [corneliused] [ In reply to ]

Oct 1, 12 17:12

Post #9 of 194 (21850 views)

Wonder how many crashes and lawsuits this product would produce... in 100 people

Re: bike on a treadmill [morey000] [ In reply to ]

Oct 1, 12 17:16

Post #10 of 194 (21838 views)

morey000 wrote:

please post a video of you trying this!!!

I second that !

Re: bike on a treadmill [corneliused] [ In reply to ]

Oct 1, 12 17:49

Post #11 of 194 (21765 views)

YouTube has plenty of videos depicting the very act you are considering. I would watch a few of them before I went any farther in the planning process. I think you might change your mind.

Re: bike on a treadmill [corneliused] [ In reply to ]

Oct 1, 12 18:01

Post #12 of 194 (21724 views)

IIRC, Chris Boardman used to train (occasionally?) on a treadmill to simulate the hills and extended climbs while preparing for the TdF.

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Re: bike on a treadmill [Robert Preston] [ In reply to ]

Oct 1, 12 18:01

Post #13 of 194 (21724 views)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rOcVMlxPsY

Rhymenocerus wrote:

I think everyone should consult ST before they do anything.

Re: bike on a treadmill [corneliused] [ In reply to ]

Oct 1, 12 18:02

Post #14 of 194 (21716 views)

Especially when on the incline I think it would be very difficult to stay on the treadmill, speed on a bike varies a lot, and with a consistent rate of speed with the mill I think it would take a lot of concentration to stay on.

Re: bike on a treadmill [corneliused] [ In reply to ]

Oct 1, 12 18:19

Post #15 of 194 (21676 views)

corneliused wrote:

Okay, here's a crazy idea I've been jonesing to try for years: get rid of the trainer and roller, at least as a daily training tool, and try placing the bike on a sufficiently long treadmill.

Sure, it's a good idea. But the proper execution of it is far more challenging and far more expensive than you can imagine. I saw the insideride trainer in operation, talked at length with the inventor, and it was a highly evolved (and very expensive) piece of technology. Also, I don't recall much of a cage around the tread, just some handrails and a simple but very clever way of controlling the speed. By the time you find and modify a treadmill to do anything like this, I think you'll just wish you had bought a set of insideride e-motion rollers. Because they'll do 99% of what their treadmill could do.

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Re: bike on a treadmill [omnivore] [ In reply to ]

Oct 1, 12 18:37

Post #16 of 194 (21616 views)

That one looks pretty fun actually, really quite wide so you could even do some weaving (adding some variation instead of just going straight) and be OK.

omnivore wrote:

Boasson Hagen does a wheelie on Sky's mill here.

Re: bike on a treadmill [corneliused] [ In reply to ]

Oct 1, 12 18:58

Post #17 of 194 (21564 views)

Thinking about this more, from a physics point of view on a flat treadmill, I believe you only need to put out enough power to overcome the friction in the bearings, the wind resistance of the spokes and rolling resistance, if you did put power into the drivetrain to overcome these 3 forces, you would ride off the treadmill if it was locked at a certain speed, so you wouldn't even be able to get workout.

With the incline, since you are actually not doing any work on yourself (from a physics point of view) you only need to overcome the gravitational pull and the other 3 forces, it wouldn't really matter how fast the treadmill goes up to since you just increase the gear on the bike. In the video of the sky rider he doesn't look like he is doing hardly any work going up the incline and is in a really big gear.

Maybe some smart physics guy can determine the gravitational force on a 15 percent incline and what that means in terms of watts.

Thoughts?

Last edited by: HXB: Oct 1, 12 19:24

Re: bike on a treadmill [Philosoraptor] [ In reply to ]

Oct 1, 12 19:19

Post #18 of 194 (21516 views)

Imagine falling off with a. Cage around you?? That would be priceless in itself. But very hard to watch after the bike hit you 20-30 times. Just imagine seaweed rolling over and over again in the the waves as it hits the beach reapetitly.

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Re: bike on a treadmill [HXB] [ In reply to ]

Oct 1, 12 19:22

Post #19 of 194 (21507 views)

I was going to say this same thing... climbing is hard because you are actually going up in elevation and going against gravity..

However just sitting in an inclined position won't do much...

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Re: bike on a treadmill [corneliused] [ In reply to ]

Oct 1, 12 19:26

Post #20 of 194 (21495 views)

It's been done...by a triathlete...in an aero helmet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ6HFgLpdnk

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Re: bike on a treadmill [waitebe] [ In reply to ]

Oct 1, 12 19:42

Post #21 of 194 (21466 views)

That was hilarious. Notice Rinny wasn't present. These drunken mishaps always happens while the SO is away.

Re: bike on a treadmill [PJC] [ In reply to ]

Oct 1, 12 19:51

Post #22 of 194 (21438 views)

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6nKEuvou1JI

Re: bike on a treadmill [Robert Preston] [ In reply to ]

Oct 1, 12 20:10

Post #23 of 194 (21394 views)

His foot slipped and went into the front wheel.

Re: bike on a treadmill [Tri-livin] [ In reply to ]

Oct 1, 12 20:17

Post #24 of 194 (21370 views)

Right, too bad team sky (or at least Mr. Bosan Hagen) or Mr. Boardman didn't consult you before wasting their time biking on treadmills..

In fact you will find it requires more power to go up a treadmill fast than slow.

Re: bike on a treadmill [Power13] [ In reply to ]

Oct 1, 12 20:21

Post #25 of 194 (21355 views)

Power13 wrote:

IIRC, Chris Boardman used to train (occasionally?) on a treadmill to simulate the hills and extended climbs while preparing for the TdF.

Yes, I remember reading this in Cyclesport....20 kph treadmill at 12% grade for an hour and he had Ventoux in his house!!!

I actually considered trying this and realized there was no way I could be on the bike and start and stop my treadmill...for th record my treadmill goes 11 mph or 17 kph and it goes up to 15%....more than anything I could handle...I can barely hold 13 kph for an hour at 8% (Whiteface and Alpe d'Huez) so my treadmill would be plenty fast and steep....the problem is controlling the speed without crashing.

Dev

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