Getting back on that bike has been hard. I brought my first TT bike in January this year and have struggled to get out during the colder and darker months.
One morning I went out full of determination to complete a two hour ride, with 3 pairs of gloves, snood, all the layers I could find but 20 mins later returned home with near frostbite…I then realised I’d left my phone inside which doubles up as my key!
I bought two bikes from The Tri Store, Eastbourne. My Cervelo TT bike with upgraded hydraulic disc brakes and a Specialized Tarmac for general road riding. I am training for my first Iron Man this year so treated myself.
During the fitting at the store I used their Tacx Neo T2 and Zwift setup to ride so they could see how I was sitting. I was impressed how interested and talented they were at noticing little details of how my body and the bike interacted. Little modifications and adjustments made a big difference to how comfortable and natural it felt.
Sitting and thinking about my experience at the store I decided that I wanted to replicate something similar to allow me to have the choice of indoor virtual riding for when the outdoors was too cold or just didn’t want to go out.
After a lot of research and discussing options with my cycling and tri-athlete friends, I decided that I’d go with the Tacx Neo T2, I guess I knew it a little and it’s price/value seemed good. I did look at the Wahoo options which looked good but decided against in favour of my experience and a slight cost saving. I did consider a Watt bike but decided that the real TT bike experience was an important part of the training.
It took me a while to sign up to Zwift as I was content with using the Tacx app. During lockdown as a result of the Coronavirus, I was very happy I’d built this setup but I wanted a bit more interaction and virtualisation. Zwift seemed to be what my friends were using and again was already familiar so I signed up.
The setup has been excellent for getting used to the TT bike which is a very different feel to a normal road bike although I’m aware it doesn’t fully replicate being on the road as I don’t have to keep my head up and concentrate on what’s in front of me, keep my balance whilst on the TT bars or keep my nerve when going down hill with no immediate access to the brakes!
It’s a great trainer and has helped me build up my fitness and watt output. I’ve ridden for many more hours than I would have. It’s become a great addition to my morning routine and allowed me to listen to a podcast in my kitchen whilst riding around New York City.
I currently use my phone to run Zwift and link up via Bluetooth to the Tacx trainer as I don’t have a laptop that is compatible. I use a chromebook and the version I have doesn’t run the Zwift app.
Once I started I realised that I don’t have a bluetooth heart rate monitor, I tried my Garmin HRM-Tri but it didn’t connect. I googled what best to do and found that my Garmin Forerunner 945 had a ‘Virtual Running’ mode which allowed it to share either it’s built in optical HR monitor or my HRM-Tri band monitor via Ant+. I found a great article on it here. This saved me buying another HR monitor and utilises the one I’m already wearing, I fell in love with my watch even more…
https://tacx.com/product/neo-2t-smart/
https://www.cervelo.com/en/p-series
https://www.specialized.com/gb/en/shop/bikes/road-bikes/performance-road-bikes/tarmac/c/tarmac