Indoor cycling

Last night I attended my first indoor cycling class and used a bicycle trainer for the first time other than for bike fitting. The class was held at Cycling Spoken Here in Apex. We moved the clothing racks out of the way and set up our trainers.

I've always thought that using a bike trainer would be pretty much the same as going to spin class at the gym. This summer, a friend of mine mentioned the indoor cycling classes to me when we were on our regular Wednesday evening group rides. Then the subject of trainers came up again during the MS150. After that I thought that I should give it a try. The trainer provided a good workout and it was definitely different than spin class at the gym. The resistance was different and some of the things that we worked on in class were quite different as well. For example, we worked on different riding positions specifically to our own road bike. After a warm up, we worked on spinups, climbing out of the saddle, one-leg training and cadence -- always cadence.

For last night's class, I asked to borrow a trainer. The next step is going to be buying one of my own. I have asked around a little bit and the consensus seems to be that CycleOps is the way to go. I used a Fluid2 model last night and I think that's probably what I'll end up getting, however, the Magneto is also a good model. It is also recommended to get a bike computer that goes on the rear wheel and has cadence.