Computrainer (late) 2007

Last week, I successfully hooked up a new Computrainer to an old Dell computer. Computrainers have been around a long time it seems. I have a memory of visiting Nick Radkewich, an American trying to make the Olympic team back before the 2000 games, and in the middle of his apartment he had a wicked Computrainer set up. It was the centerpiece of his home.

I played around with the software on the Computer. Just about every bike course worth mentioning can be simulated on the trainer, with computer game like graphics to give you the cerebral gist of where you are. But the real goods is in the data ticker. What a feast. After you calibrate the bike and start riding, the trainer simulates the hills and conditions of your ride, and then lets you know in hard numbers the following: speed, time, watts, cadence, heart rate, distance covered, and averages of several of these. There might be something else that I'm forgetting, but you get the idea. And there it is, on your monitor, delivered to you in real time, right below a little graphic simulation of yourself as you pedal around (for example) Seattle. When you hit a climb, the trainer tells you what the angle of the slope is as you feel the machine add resistance to your pedaling.