I bought some cheapo rollers on Craigslist and they’ve worked out really well, but as has been previously said, not much challenge. I train mostly on my fluid trainer and add a roller ride here and there as a recovery option or when I have a long workout where rollers will help fight the trainer boredom.
.
I also bought some cheap ones off Craig’s list for 90 bucks. They’re Minoura and probably approaching around the two decade in age mark, but they’re awesome. They also have a resistance belt with four or five settings. On the second setting it’s about 210 watts for 19 mph, which is pretty similar to the road for me. I love them. If you could find a pair similar to that then I’d say it’s a pretty good deal.
I have been thinking about getting rollers for a while, buy I can’t think of many products that are so poorly defined and described so that anyone can understand. I have run technology companies, and yet, even though I have read the threads here, been on the Kreitler site, i still don’t get it.
They talk about various types of end-caps, but I have no idea what these things do.
Get a headwind fan, and then your roller size might need to change, but you need the fan for resistance?
Where does the flywheel fit in, and do I need it?
Do I have to figure out how to adjust the roller frame for my road bike when i set it up, or is it automatic?
I have gone to the Kreitler website several times and left without a purchase because I am confused by the lack of clear information. Reading the threads on Slowtwitch makes this even more confusing, because many like the Kreitlers, some prefer the e-motion, others make their own, some say that rollers benefit your pedal stroke and bike handling (which is the main reason I want to make this purchase) others claim it’s a myth.
So, I use TrainerRoad as my winter training plans and currently use a Kurt Kinetic Road Machine., I also find that I suffer not so much from the effort or time, but my ass hurts, and supposedly the movement on the rollers alleviates this somewhat.
I am doing the Mid Volume Traditional Base, but I like doing the 2 X 20 Speed Spot workouts, so not sure if these are best done o trainers or rollers.
They talk about various types of end-caps, but I have no idea what these things do.
Get a headwind fan, and then your roller size might need to change, but you need the fan for resistance?
Where does the flywheel fit in, and do I need it?
Do I have to figure out how to adjust the roller frame for my road bike when i set it up, or is it automatic?
I have gone to the Kreitler website several times and left without a purchase because I am confused by the lack of clear information. Reading the threads on Slowtwitch makes this even more confusing, because many like the Kreitlers, some prefer the e-motion, others make their own, some say that rollers benefit your pedal stroke and bike handling (which is the main reason I want to make this purchase) others claim it’s a myth.
So, I use TrainerRoad as my winter training plans and currently use a Kurt Kinetic Road Machine., I also find that I suffer not so much from the effort or time, but my ass hurts, and supposedly the movement on the rollers alleviates this somewhat.
I am doing the Mid Volume Traditional Base, but I like doing the 2 X 20 Speed Spot workouts, so not sure if these are best done o trainers or rollers.
End caps speak to durability. It is cheaper to have plastic end caps than metal. I doubt there is much difference in quality.
The fan might increase the resistance too much. Larger roller diameters are easier. Small rollers + fan = very hard :: Large rollers + fan = hard.
Don’t worry about the flywheel.
It is easy to set the roller frame up… the front roller is under or slightly in front of the front axle. Might involve some bolts but not difficult.
I doubt that rollers will alleviate ass pain. The freedom of the rollers doesn’t do much from pressure relief IMO. When you first start out it will actually be more difficult to get out of the saddle to relieve pressure because you’ll lack the balance.
Get a cheap set and try them out to see if you like it.
The emotion roller are awesome I rode them at the local studio, but I have Nash bar rollers at home and they work just fine too. To get get 400+ watts of resistance I just pop 2 folded kitchen towels under the rear roller. If you add just the right amount of resistance you can go all the way from an easy spin to high power through gear shifts just like a trainer.
I put two large neodymium magnets on a small sliding clamp to add additional resistance to my rollers. Adds about ~80-120w of resistance at same wheel speeds.
no one has mentioned these yet, but i have the Tacx Galaxia rollers. i payed around $300 for them & have been wholly satisfied.
it’s very easy to get out of the saddle on them & do intervals. they have this neat “rocking cradle” mechanism that allows the system to move under you when sprinting & moving the bike around.
don’t mean to throw more options your way as i’m sure you have enough, but just in case you hadn’t heard of them they’re definitely worth a look.
PS - as others have said, the emotion rollers are hands down the best if you wanna dish out that kind of bread.
My 2 cents…I had about the least expensive rollers possible some years ago - from Performance, pretty big drums, all polymer. Worked great! I mean, uh, terrifying! I got used to them, really, pretty fast and used them for 2-3 winters, probably 1500 miles total. No warping, plenty of resistance and pretty inexpensive. BUT, I found it a challenge to stay upright while hammering and/or watching cycling/F1 videos. I went to a fluid trainer and never looked back. The trainer doesn’t provide the balance/handling part of the equation, but overall, I think that my winter training is better on the fluid trainer rather than the rollers. I wanted to go back and mix it up a bit a couple of years ago and use the rollers again - they are an odd shape, for sure, but if you store a ladder in the garage… Well, my spouse gave them away. Krietlers are generally considered to be among the best and they have (or had, at the time) a small diameter model (dynamite?) that was particularly hard/appreciated…
I put two large neodymium magnets on a small sliding clamp to add additional resistance to my rollers. Adds about ~80-120w of resistance at same wheel speeds.
I tried the same thing but what I did was stuck the magnets to a plank of wood and jammed the plank in parallel to the rear rollers so the magets were close to the rear roller but so the wood is low enough to not touch the actual wheel (hopefully I explained this well enough). But then I had another idea. What I did was take duct tape and tape it vertically between spokes effectively turning my wheel into a large “fan”. That seems to work well. I have a dedicated wheel that I just put on for the winter. At slow speeds it has almost no effect but up at 40 kph it is substantial…add in riding with Gatorskins and the rollers end up being pretty decent. Last winter most of my winter riding was 20-60 min per day on that set up and I only touched my CT around 5 times. I got on my folding commuter bike 3 times in the first week of April after the snow melted and showed up to Galveston never having ridden my TT bike till Friday before the race and had a solid race. Most of the winter, I had no idea what wattage I was riding at, but it was “hard enough”. At Galveston I biked at 3.25 W per kilo. By mid season, my best half IM was 3.46 W per kilo. So I got most of the way there just spinning around with no focus. I actually surprised myself how fit I had gotten on the winter routine of “just spinning”. I THINK the addtion of my “fans” proably made all those rides harder than I thought, but I never measured it. I did measure before the ‘fan’ and I can easily get to 230W with no magnets and just Gatorskins as I mentioned earlier today.
All of this is imperfect, because a lot of bike fitness is probably coming from my winter XC skiing routine, but I really surprised myself how hard I was able to go at Galveston with lots of short roller filler rides and only a handful of “real” hard CT rides the longest of which was only 70 minutes. Pretty sure that 2-4 hours of ski skiing covered the bike endurance and the roller spinning was just enough specificity and the right level of sweet spot intensity.
I put two large neodymium magnets on a small sliding clamp to add additional resistance to my rollers. Adds about ~80-120w of resistance at same wheel speeds.
All of this is imperfect, because a lot of bike fitness is probably coming from my winter XC skiing routine, but I really surprised myself how hard I was able to go at Galveston with lots of short roller filler rides and only a handful of “real” hard CT rides the longest of which was only 70 minutes. Pretty sure that 2-4 hours of ski skiing covered the bike endurance and the roller spinning was just enough specificity and the right level of sweet spot intensity.
Here is what is interesting. I did the least XC skiing this part winter . My XC skiing was around 55 hours from Jan to March, wheras previous years it would be close to 90… On the bike Just a bunch of short moderate intensity roller rides often, and my hard CT riding was down, did my usual run routine and did more swimming.
In the end, it made no difference to my spring bike fitness compared to doing my XC skiing and more CT riding. The rollers often at moderate intensity seemed to have been “enough” to get most of the way there. I will probably stick to a similar routine this winter rather than chasing watts on the CT and getting mentally at the razor’d edge of burn out. 6 weeks after doing Galveston I did IM Texas. For that race, my longest rides were Galveston and St Croix (I will admit that that last hour of the bike seemed to go on forever…but better suffer that one day than all winter on the trainer than ever day…bike split was 5:21 on windy day). I will say that certainly all these years of experience and base are helpful, but lots of short moderately hard roller rides were pretty decent and not entirely a waste of time…plus they are not mind numbing.
Stuff like:
20 min = 5 min warmup 15x30 seconds hard, 30 second easy…done40 min = 5 min warmup, 10x1 min hard 1 min easy, 2x4 min hard 1 min easy, done
My feeling is that the “hard” ends up in between half IM pace and FTP, but not much harder and its easy to ride like that often when it is that short.
It goes quickly and can be done as a warmup before those cold winter runs when the concept of “warm up” in minus 15C takes forever…better 20 min on the rollers work up a good sweat, wipe off, put on winter clothes and out the door and running at full pace 1 min later. Or sometimes, I come back from a really cold XC ski when even the car heater does not warm me up and rather than spend 20 min in the shower trying to warm up, I just get on the rollers for 20 minutes until I am really hot and then my shower is only 5 min. What do you think?
that sounds like a plan. I was real dedicated in the basement last year and did not xc much, screw that for this winter. It did not do me any good and I was sick of the grind comes spring. I’m going to run and ski and do a little riding on the rollers and that’s good enough.
I must say doing cyclocross off months and months of no intervals or quality of any sort has not been much fun.
that sounds like a plan. I was real dedicated in the basement last year and did not xc much, screw that for this winter. It did not do me any good and I was sick of the grind comes spring. I’m going to run and ski and do a little riding on the rollers and that’s good enough.
I must say doing cyclocross off months and months of no intervals or quality of any sort has not been much fun.
Yeah I think for us skiers, months of winter grind on the trainer is useless. Frequent moderate intensity on the rollers keeps it fun…and we can get the long stuff done on skis. I am toying with taking the experiment a step further in the next year or two and doing a March or April IM for which my longest trainer ride will be 1.5 - 2 hours, but I will do several 3-4.5 hours skis which will be the equivalent of my long bike outing…and daily 20-40 min on the rollers as “filler”. Maybe the experiment works, maybe it fails, however, my view is that I would rather have failure on the single day of a race, that have a “failing program” on a daily basis eating into my quality of life…when I say “daily failing” what I mean is when the training is no longer additive to my quality of life and turns into a grind. Then its not worth it. We’re old enough now that unless the daily training is motivating there is limited benefit. Doing training just to get faster is a case of 'been there, done that, too much of the same".
I think short roller rides are a lot of fun…and of course they get even more fun when I crank out really high RPM on powercranks (OK I mentioned them…ban me now)
I have a set of Sportcrafters and of the non-motion upscale models they are my favorite. There is a bit of a learning curve when you get started but three or four sessions for me and it got better. I have the model with the rear most drum that has a resistance module built internal to it. You can disable it by flipping it around, but I’ve never do that since upgrading from the old magnet bar. The old resistance bar I set in a 1-5 setting and had to stick with unless I got off or someone changed it for me… the new rear drum has a gradual increase like a trainer does… no more spinning 30+mph on a low setting but this is a workout tool.
In addition to all of this, they have wonderful customer service with a warranty that can’t be beat… had some drums replaced at no cost. I try and keep it as clean, wipe it down after every use best I can but in the winter months they get rained on with sweat.
Honestly I can recommend them for just about anything except for out of the saddle stuff, that is a bit rough even with a few years of riding them under my belt. They will certainly help you with bike handling and the mechanics of your pedaling. I’ve been complemented by actual roadies… I credit some of that to my winter months balancing for hours on rollers.
Yeah I think for us skiers, months of winter grind on the trainer is useless. Frequent moderate intensity on the rollers keeps it fun…and we can get the long stuff done on skis. I am toying with taking the experiment a step further in the next year or two and doing a March or April IM for which my longest trainer ride will be 1.5 - 2 hours, but I will do several 3-4.5 hours skis which will be the equivalent of my long bike outing…and daily 20-40 min on the rollers as “filler”.
Dev,
Agreed.
For you this is a repeat. I had some of my best years of triathlon racing after winters where I had elevated my xc skiing fitness to it’s highest level with *minimal *cycling from November through to mid to late March. When I say best, to put this in context, and not to brag, that meant flirting with nine hours a few times at IM.
That was after whole winters of riding only 1 - 2 times/week - either a very intense session on the resistance trainer, or a spin on the rollers - that would be it for cycling from Nov - mid-March.
Many long skis ( 3 - 4 hours, both classic & skate) other shorter skis and some ski racing in loppets and marathons (30 - 50K)
The riding would come back fast in the spring. After only a few weeks of outdoor riding in a bit of a focused block, I was back riding 100K at a decent pace! By summer - back at 5 hour flat IM bike split fitness!
Of course you REALLY need to commit to the skiing to make this work!
Krietlers are generally considered to be among the best and they have (or had, at the time) a small diameter model (dynamite?) that was particularly hard/appreciated…
