Cycle All Year Long

I love spin classes at the gym and I love to ride my mountain bike outside. But, there have been days I get to the gym and the spin class is full, and other days where it's raining outside so I can't ride my mountain bike. So when I heard about bike trainers I was super excited and couldn't wait to get my own! I have looked into my own spin bike, like the Proform Tour De France bike, are really expensive...I'm talking $1,500 expensive!  

Now bike trainers can be a bit pricey too, but I'm not a competitive cyclist or anything. I do this all for fun. So I only needed a basic bike trainer. I looked around and read some reviews. There are a couple different types of trainers.

A bike trainer is a device that clamps onto your rear axle and presses a resistance roller against the rear tire so that you can ride in place. They come in three basic categories:

• Wind trainer: Possess a small fan that creates resistance, but is far from silent.
• Mag trainer: A bit more expensive and quieter.
• Fluid trainer: More expensive and quieter than the Mag trainer.

I opted for a Forza F2 Mag Trainer. I found mine on eBay for $50, but brand new they can range from $80-150. So it arrived and was easy to setup. It folds up nicely for storage under a bed or in a closet. One major thing to note that I never read anywhere, is that if you use your mountain bike for this trainer, the tread on the back tire will vibrate the bike and it actually is loud. I looked this up and read that you can buy a slick tire to put on a mountain bike. But, if you have a road/cycle bike, you can easily set this up and it's quiet. Unfortunately for me, I don't have a cycle bike and replacing my tire on my mountain bike was a bit of a hassle. 

While I eventually ended up reselling my trainer, it doesn't mean that this was a poor purchase. I just wasn't informed, but now YOU know better than I. If I still lived in the Midwest (as opposed to South Florida), I would definitely get a trainer and replace my tire with a slick one during the winter months and then put my mountain tread tire back on for the summer. Living in Florida, I'm outside all year round whenever it's not raining so changing a tire every other day is nonsense.