Cycling experts will tell you there's no substitute for actual time in the saddle in the great outdoors to prepare you for the season ahead.
But if long work hours, short winter days or inclement weather drive you inside, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more suitable stand-in for the asphalt of the open road than the LeMond Fitness Revolution.
The Revolution is manufactured by the company founded by three-time Tour de France champion Greg LeMond. But even if your skill level is more lanterne rouge than maillot jaune, you'll still get a massive workout. You can spin on it. You can hammer on it. You can grind huge gears and do awesome spin-ups. You can work up a gigantic pool of sweat on the garage floor.
To use the Revolution, you take off your back wheel and clamp your bike down onto it. It's more complicated to set up than a mag roller, but even I – someone who lacks the mechanical intuition required to assemble a proper burrito – was able to manage it with ease. I did have to go through directions a few times to get the trainer in line with the bike's rear dropouts, but I still made it from box cutter to the first turn of the pedals in less than 20 minutes.
One note here: our Revolution came with a Shimano 10-speed cassette installed. If you are using multiple bicycles or running something other than SRAM or a Shimano 10-speed, you may have to buy the appropriate cassette body to make it work for you.
There are only two caveats stopping this from being the world champion of trainers. First, it's heavy and awkward. Moving the Revolution is a two-handed job, making it less than perfect for throwing it in the back of the car and running off to the races. Second, it's a noisy beast. After a few minutes in the guest room, I felt compelled to dismount and head for the garage. It doesn't produce a clanging racket or anything, but more of whirring whip-up. Still, the flywheel is noisy enough that I can't recommend this for apartment dwellers.
Those issues aside – and the garage is the better place to blast my appropriately angry music, anyway – it appears Mr. LeMond has a product here to match his winning ways.
The trainer employs something LeMond Fitness calls High-Inertia Technology (HIT), which closely mimics the feel of being on the road. I have to give the company props for getting the "road feel" closer to the real thing than any other trainer I've ever ridden. Unlike most magnetic trainers, there's a pleasing simulation of coasting as the flywheel keeps rotating when you ease up on the pedals. This also allows you to vary your cadence, and thus mimic at-speed sprints or do repeated spin-ups.
The interface between bike and trainer is solid, and it breeds confidence for whatever punishment you might have planned for your workout. I could stand and sprint. I could sit and spin. I could shift up to the big ring and hammer. And with the flywheel, the process was easier on my knees than a spin cycle or a magnetic trainer. Throughout my whole workout, I kept thinking how nice it was to be on my own bicycle as opposed to a piece of gym equipment. And I love the fact I'm not wearing through my rear tire, as I would on a magnetic trainer.
Some of you may still prefer spinning out your legs and working on your bicycle handling skills on a set of rollers, or attending the occasional spin class for the motivation and camaraderie in these cold, dark days of winter. Having already spent too many hours in November and December in spin class, it was a nice change. Here in California, our winters are mild enough for me to hit the road most days, but for those of you stuck in the snow, this trainer is a real revelation.
LeMond's company is also working on something called the Power Pilot Meter which attaches to the Revolution trainer and measures all the important stuff like speed, distance, heart rate, watts, calories burned, and pedal cadence. LeMond Fitness' vice president of sales Bernie Boglioli tells Wired.com the highly-anticipated companion gadget has finally passed muster after a grueling testing phase and is shipping at the end of this month. The meter wasn't available for us to test, unfortunately. In the meantime, we will be hanging onto our LeMond for a few more revolutions.
Photo: Adam Schwarcz from Pacific Bicycle (Jon Snyder/Wired.com)