Thursday, December 18, 2008

GamJams Reviews: Trainer Distractions - There was one?

The beauty of the RealAxiom Trainer is the trainer is the distraction. Do you find a one hour spin on your trainer to be one hour of sheer boredom? Then ride Alpe D'Huez without boarding a plane. Simply select it from the menu on the RealAxiom and within the first mile you're hitting the first of 21 switchbacks on this ~eight mile mythic climb. Need tunes you say? Load all the tunes you want into a play list and you can ride up the mountain listening to whatever tune spins your crank. Is the average ~9.9 gradient too much for you winter training plan? Shift into the small ring/large cog and spin easy all the way to the top passing cars, bikes, pedestrians, road kill, and whatever was there when they filmed the ascent (bonus in that the RealAxiom tops out at ~6-7%). Tired of being a mountain goat? Do any number of other courses available from http://www.shopelite.com/ or http://www.performancebike.com/ for a modest fee. Need to know where you stand as a cyclist? Take the Training Test which gives you your average watts/kg ratio from the test and uses it to provide a "cyclist rating." Don't like any of the RealAxiom courses? Just go into the Axiom software and create your own course. Or do what I did, build a course of the race where you plan to kick tail to practice it all year long (don't ask me how that turned out). All of this eye candy surely is better than watching the cat yak up a fur ball around minute twenty-three or, if you are Betty-Betty (Itchy Bits), watching the dog take a dump right in front of you during your spin. Better yet, lock the door to your "training room" so you won't have to listen to your young daughter complaining about how her older brother just pulled her hair or your spouse walking in, crossing their arms with a disgruntled look on their face saying "how much longer is this going to take?" These are distractions, or lets call them close encounters, you don't need, but somehow always seem to happen during your spin.