Originally Posted by
RChung
The main skill that roller riding improves is riding on rollers. It's kind of handy to learn how to look from one side to the other without changing your line, but you can learn that on the road, too. The best way to learn group riding skills is to ride with groups. Pedaling efficiency and smoothness via rollers is a red herring. But riding rollers doesn't hurt anything so if you want to, go ahead.
I disagree strongly with the first bolded statement. In my experience, roller riding is great for fine bike handling skills. To the point that coming off of winter with a lot of roller training I feel much more confident in a pack than later in the season when I've been off the roller training for a while. Maybe this is just me.
I agree with the second bolded statement. There is a lot of evidence that
unloaded high rpm pedaling is fundamentally different than
loaded high rpm pedaling.
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"If you’re new enough [to racing] that you would ask such question, then i would hazard a guess that if you just made up a workout that sounded hard to do, and did it, you’d probably get faster." --
the tiniest sprinter