Originally Posted by
Prabuddhadg
Poking at this old thread. It is full of very useful advice. I have had a Minoura roller for over a year now, and I am still not very comfortable on it. I admit, I do not ride it too often. Sometimes I do not ride it for a whole month. I am still not able to ride even one handed. I do not know whether the reason behind this is my own lack of stability or whether something is the matter with the roller.
The only issue I have actually felt with the roller is the complete inability to coast. If I stop pedalling from a cadence of 90 rpm on say 52 X 18, the wheels stop within 1 second. The rollers are pretty light, but the bearings are smooth.
On the road, I can ride no hands. I can ride 70- 100 km flat to rolling, at 30 kmph ( just to give an idea of my cycling skills). Here in Bombay, cycling is not a very popular sport and I have 1 or 2 ride partners at a time. So, I am not very sure how unwavering my line is in terms of being a good wheel to draft.
I can't figure out what it is that makes life so difficult on rollers. Can anybody help? Do I just need to ride for hours on rollers and get my balance perfected? Or do I need to check something on the rollers too?
I wish I could tell you. I'm on 3in Kreitlers for about 2 weeks now. I still ride in a doorway and my shoulder sometimes touches the door frame, generally after I do something like take a drink, or stand and sprint (not every time I do, in fact, very seldom), but that's it. I can ride 1 handed, but not handed, but I haven't tried yet. I pedal cadences from the 80s to the 140s on them with no issues.
I fell off the first day, and after some advice on a rollers thread I started, realigned the roller spindle to directly under my front axle (minus a mm maybe) and that made all the difference.