Originally Posted by
TimothyH
@
kbarch, your experience is not the same as mine. I'm not trying to challenge you or tell you that you are wrong, just noting that I have a very different experience.
What gearing do you run and are you using resistance rollers?
My bike is 48-16 (79 inches) on Sportcrafter rollers with the "High Inertia" non-resistance drum. Tires are at 120 PSI. I can let the cadence drop well below 50 and spinning back up to over 110 is not nearly the struggle you describe. Everything spins up very freely.
Last night I did 1.5 hours, 28.3 miles at 18.8 MPH average. Max speed was over 25 MPH and I rode for about 30 seconds at 35 RPM during cooldown just for fun. Varying cadence was not a huge struggle.
Again, not trying to challenge but wondering what the difference is. You are a pretty strong rider IIRC. Maybe you have a much higher gear ratio?
-Tim-
You know, I'm curious as well. Maybe I'm doing something or set something up wrong. The gearing is 48-17, so a little easier than yours, but Kreitler rollers with 3.0 drums - a significant difference in our setups. Rock hard 25mm Panaracer tires.
When riding them with the geared bikes (Vittoria Pave CG or similar tires), I'll typically start with something a little easier, but with gearing equivalent to the FG's it doesn't seem as difficult, it's quite easy to ramp up the speed, and varying cadence doesn't seem as precarious. It's easy to ride much faster than on the road - 30mph is quite doable once I'm warmed up, and for a much longer duration than I can hold on the road (naturally, since there's no air resistance). I can ease up on the effort, mostly, but not entirely, by changing gears.
Today, not only could I not change gears, but it seemed like I couldn't ease up without falling into a trap, as it were. Maybe I could have and it would have been OK, but I was
afraid to ease up. A slower cadence was so much harder to sustain. I can sustain a slow cadence on geared bikes all day long, and on the FG on the road I do it all the time, but on the rollers? Without momentum, it's not happening.
I got the rollers used. One of the drums was very deformed, and I replaced it. One of the others is slightly deformed on one end, too, but I only notice it when the bike veers to that side. Maybe that's why I don't roll as easily as I ought to be able to, but the feeling that I'll fall into a trap if I ease up, I think that's something different.