Trainers And Rollers And Whatkind

ckel101 said:

As colder less bareable weather moves closer and closer to home.. I was wondering what would be the best... A trainer or a roller, and what kind (of course within reason, nothing over 300) lemme know what yall think

I'd personally go for the Trainer with adjustable resistance. I'm using a Tacx and eventually save up and get the "flow ergo trainer" which has the various functions.

The one I'm particularly interested in is the power meter readings.

Rollers are good to teach you to ride straight & warm-up (my opinion) which you can do with a trainer too, but for training I'd go for trainer.

Probably a good watts trainer would be the best choice. Wanting to save a few bucks tho, I got a Road machine by Kinetic last fall. Road the Cyclops but the RM is much nicer. My only complaint after about 80 hours of time on the RM is the rear tightening knob is easy to strip (nut strips from the housing). Kinetic has provided the first replacement knob free. That ended up stripping recently and they sent me two more, charging me shipping only. Probably would have shipped it free, but I had a time trial coming up and wanted them in 2 days.

I also have a roller. Overall you will get more developed on the trainer over the roller. There are various ways to increase resistance on some of the newer rollers, but I believe you will get more out of training with a trainer over a roller. There are other issues (balance, etc), but after all it's about getting the most out of your off season training.

ckel101 said:

As colder less bareable weather moves closer and closer to home.. I was wondering what would be the best... A trainer or a roller, and what kind (of course within reason, nothing over 300) lemme know what yall think

ckel101 said:

As colder less bareable weather moves closer and closer to home.. I was wondering what would be the best... A trainer or a roller, and what kind (of course within reason, nothing over 300) lemme know what yall think

It seems that your budget restricts you to only one or the other. If noise is not an issue, you might be able to get a wind trainer and a set of cheaper rollers. I haven't used a trainer exclusively for an entire off-season, so I don't know whether the warnings of destroying your form have any weight.

I have both Kreitler Challenger (aluminum, PVC caps) rollers and a 1Up CPR2000 trainer, which each max out your budget. Both have superb build quality, worth the cost. The rollers have no resistance unit, so getting moderate resistance requires high gearing, faster speeds, and scary-quick handling.

I would get a trainer. If you want fluid, the Kurt Kinetic seems good, and the resistance chamber is fully sealed.