Pain Cave Upgrades
- January
- 22
My basement pain cave is working out pretty good this year. I find I'm getting a better aerobic workout than riding outside; at least that's the excuse I'm using for not going out in the cold as much.
The first enhancement was to remove the flimsy trainer mat that I originally got with my Kurt Kinetic road machine and replace it with something more durable. After scouring the web for suggestions and reading all the reviews on what people have tried I ended up going with a very inexpensive solution that is working out well. I purchased a stall mat from Tractor Supply Company. It's made from recycled rubber (probably tires) and is 3/4" thick. The 4 x 6 foot piece lays completely flat on the floor, does not move, buckle or puncture unlike the thin excuse for a trainer mat that it replaced.
There are a few caveats though. First of all, this thing is very unwieldy to move around. I didn't weigh it but it could easily be 80-100 lbs. It doesn't like to be rolled or folder very easily either. So moving this thing around is a real challenge. I did manage to get it into my basement by first rolling it up outside and putting some tiedown straps around it to hold it (without them it would just unroll immediately). Then I strapped it to a hand truck with a bungee cord and wheeled it into the house. If I didn't have the hand truck I would have needed help from someone to move it for sure.
The second issue is that it smells a bit. It's kind of like having a bunch of new tires sitting there. The smell doesn't really bother me in any way other than it's noticeable when I'm nearby. When I'm working out I don't really notice it that much as I'm concentrating on other things. I suppose with time the odor will decrease somewhat. Maybe I could have washed or coated it when it was still outside but I'm not hauling it back out there to try that.
So now I have an extremely stable floor for my pain cave. It is impervious to sweat and anything else that might get spilled on it and it holds up well to the heavy weight of the trainer and impressions from my desk chair when I'm using the computer for other purposes (like now). I'm so glad I got this mat. The other one was driving me nuts between moving around and refusing to lie flat. I even put a small hole in the old one with my chair leg because the rubber is so soft. Maybe I'll keep it for doing core exercises or something like that. I could see getting another stall mat and increasing the workout area a bit so that I could use free weights. Maybe next year.
The second enhancement for this year is the addition of a Wahoo Fitness Desk. Although I have been using a desk that is adjustable in height, it wasn't really suited to the task. I couldn't move it and it also didn't adjust high enough that I could position it over the handlebars to reach the keyboard and mouse. I bought the Wahoo desk with a little hesitation because the pictures showed someone using a laptop with it. I use a nice big 27" diagonal monitor for my workouts. The desk is not real wide and I wasn't sure there would be enough room for the monitor and keyboard. More on that later.
So this desk is very well designed and built. It is built of 12 gauge steel tubing so it's very durable. It went together easily with a few hex keys. It has three wheels on it so you can actually push it out of your way or pull it closer while you're riding. I personally found it rolled a bit too easy so I usually put something in front of the middle wheel so it doesn't go anywhere during use. It looks like it would be easy to remove the wheels too if you wanted it more stationary.
The desk is very adjustable in height. You push down a button at each end of the desktop and you can adjust the height up and down. It's a little harder to adjust it in the upward direction with a monitor on it but it works. The center of the desk has a non-slip rubber mat. That keeps stuff from sliding around (or off) when riding. The keyboard doesn't move at all. My optical mouse works on that surface too, although it is not easy to slide. I may put a smoother mouse pad on the right side eventually.
I should comment that the height adjustment of the desk does not allow it to drop as low as a normal working desk height. The desk is designed to work from an elevated (training or standing) position. I still use my normal desk for other work so it's not a problem having a secondary monitor up on the higher desk. I don't think I would be comfortable using the Wahoo desk as a normal desktop unless I got a higher stool to sit on or something.
The other features of the desk that are handy are that it has a groove in the front and back that you can fit your tablet or cell phone in. There groove width is variable between two sizes so hopefully your phone will fit one of them and be at a good angle for viewing while you ride. My iPhone 6 with waterproof case fits into the wider segment of the grooves. If you have a really thick case your phone may not fit though as mine fits a little snug.
The other nice thing is that there are loops for power cords on the back. That keeps the cords routed to the side and out of the way. There are also holes under the grooves so that a charging cable for your phone, tablet or otherwise can pass through to the device. Very nice.
As far as the width of the desk, it turned out to be a little too narrow for me to set it up the way I wanted with the monitor in the center and the keyboard directly in front of me. So I had to make a small modification so that it was more stable with the monitor sitting way back on the desk (actually hanging off the back a bit). Although the monitor would sit back that way okay I didn't feel it was stable enough to stand up to desk movement. The center of gravity of the monitor was very close to the edge and it wouldn't take much to send the monitor to the floor. What I did was to make two small holes in the desk and used a heavy-duty wire tie to strap the monitor down. That little extra bit of assurance was all that was needed. So now the screen is toward the back of the desk and the keyboard fits nicely in front. Plenty of room on the sides for anything else I might want to keep handy too.
Turns out that the desk is just wide enough to allow me to put my fan underneath and aim it slightly upward to get plenty of air. That was always a drawback with the other desk.
I've done a few workouts so far with the new setup and I'll probably tweak a few things as time goes on. For now I am really pleased how everything came out and it just makes my indoor workouts that much more enjoyable.
See you all on Zwift!
George
Apple Mini (Late 2014) SSD Upgrade
- December
- 11
I've been wanting to boost the performance of my Mac Mini for some time now. Running some benchmarks showed me that my i5 processor was certainly worthy but the main bottleneck was disk i/o. Having a 5400 RPM hard drive was the weak spot.
The first thing to do was figure out what tools I needed to open the machine and also what kind of drive I wanted to put in. I settled on getting a 1TB Samsung 850 Pro SATA drive from Amazon and purchased the appropriate tools from iFixit.
I also purchased a new drive sled from applecomponents.com that included the special Apple proprietary drive cable in case I ever wanted to add a second PCIe drive. They are a bit pricey right now but they will certainly get cheaper.
Following the iFixit guide worked out perfectly. The only extra thing I had to do was remove the IR sensor and cable from the old drive sled and mount it on the new sled. Had to pay attention to getting the cable end connector lined up in the right direction so it would snap back onto the motherboard properly.
I used CarbonCopy cloner in order to copy everything from the original drive (now mounted externally) back to the new drive. It took about 5 hours to do it.
Here are the benchmarks that I ran from my Windows Bootcamp partition before and after the upgrade:
Prior to upgrade I had a 5400 RPM spinning disk. Performance was pretty poor as you can imagine.
After the upgrade and using the Samsung disk utility to boost the performance I did another test.
I couldn't be more pleased with the outcome. Both Mac OSX and Windows are so much more responsive now. One additional note, I had to manually enable TRIM on OSX. It won't turn on natively with a non-Apple drive.
Chickpeas with Tomato and Spinach
- May
- 23
Chickpeas with Tomato and Spinach
Ingredients:
2 cups dried chickpeas
1 teaspoon tumeric powder
6 Tbs oil (I use canola)
6 medium roma tomatoes diced
1 large yellow onion diced
4 cups packed fresh spinach
1/2 cup water
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon methi seeds
1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 bay leaf
8 dried red chilli peppers
Pinch aesofotida
1 teaspoon garam masala
2 teaspoons salt
Few sprigs of fresh cilantro (coriander)
Method:
Soak chickpeas overnight. Discard the water from soaking and place the chickpeas in pressure cooker. Cover with water plus about 1-1/2 more, about 8 cups. Add turmeric. Heat on high until steaming, reduce heat to medium low. Allow to cook at pressure for 12 minutes. Remove heat and let pressure reduce naturally.
For seasonings and vegetables heat the oil in a skillet or wok until a cumin seed crackles when dropped in. When hot add the aesofotida, cumin seeds, methi seeds, coriander seeds, bay leaf and red chilies. Stir for one minute. Add diced onion. Cook over medium high heat until onion starts to turn translucent. Add diced tomatoes. Cook for another few minutes until tomatoes are softened. Reduce heat, add 1/2 cup water and fresh spinach. Cover. Allow to steam and spinach will reduce and become tender. As the spinach volume reduces, stir it in with the spices.
Drain chickpeas retaining some of the juices. Add the vegetable mixture and enough of the juice back in to get a soupy consistency. Add salt and garam masala. Simmer everything together for about 20 minutes to mix the flavors.
Garnish with fresh cilantro. Serve with rice or naan.
Zwift Beta
- January
- 1
I finally got my invite to join the Zwift beta program on Christmas Eve. Since I was just starting the Rapha Festive 500 Challenge on Strava I decided to wait a little while before I checked it out because I knew that I would push myself a bit once I got started and I didn't want to be riding inside when I should be outside.
I finished the Rapha challenge in six days. Because of a health issue I'm staying indoors for a while so the timing is right to give Zwift a try. Since I received the beta invite I also received an invite to test the IOS app that works in tandem with the Windows program.
Zwift is pretty basic right now, you log in, configure your sensors, customize your look and bike a bit and join right in. Once you're riding you can just spin around or you can try for the orange, green, or polka dot jersey.
Everything went very smoothly for me on the first ride. I got the polka dot jersey and held it for quite a while. The bad part was that when I lost it the person who took it away beat my time by an incredible amount leaving me wondering if he was cheating or whether his equipment just wasn't operating correctly. His time was about half of mine on the climb. Similarly, on my second ride someone took the orange jersey from me with a time that was about a third of mine. I'm not sure how the Zwift folks are going to address that sort of thing yet.
While you are riding the time changes much quicker than real life. And there is lots of scenery to look at. There are lots of butterflies flying around (too many in my opinion) and a few deer that just stand there while you whiz by.
There are several different views you can switch to while you are riding. The iPhone app has a button that lets you switch them easily from the bike. The only one missing from the videos I've seen onlin is the helicopter view. Maybe they are still working on that one.
The number of people riding is variable. I have seen as few as 5 people on and as many as 15. There are also plenty of AI riders that you can ride with. They're the blue outlines you see in the photos.
One issue I ran into on my second ride was that I stopped for a minute and then started pedaling again which should have just started me riding again. Instead the program crashed. I had to go back in. It saved a fit file but it wasn't closed properly so Strava complained when I uploaded it - it still was okay though. The bad thing about this was that I lost the experience points that I had accumulated and also my award for hitting 800 watts (which I did again on the next session).
Although it's possible to draft other riders I don't feel any benefit in the power requirement while doing it. And it's very difficult to stay the correct distance behind another rider, AI or real. I always seem to be riding up next to them or an AI rider suddenly comes by me quickly. It's much harder to draft on Zwift than in real life. They will need to work on this if it's going to be any type of a training tool.
So overall I classify this as as fun and somewhat motivating but definitely not a serious training tool yet. Knowing the background of the founder I can expect that they will be working on making it better as time goes on. And word is that they are working on a Mac version which will make me happy since I won't have to run Windoze to use it.
Wahoo KICKR
- December
- 23
I was fortunate that I had a big expense reimbursement this month and also three paychecks in December so I gave myself a Christmas present early and bought a Wahoo KICKR. Performance had a $50 off coupon and had one in stock in their Delaware store so no state sales tax. I also got Performance Points of 10% so my net price was $945.
Now I wasn't completely dissatisfied with my previous setup, in fact I had purchased the Kurt Kinetic InRide power sensor and the pro flywheel recently. That combination really made my Kurt trainer work well with TrainerRoad instead of using their Virtual Power feature. The trouble is that when I'm training I really don't want to have to think about too much other than riding my bike. Having to watch (and match) the required power output by shifting gears all the time was somewhat of a pain although I did feel I was getting a good workout from the setup. Adding the KICKR meant that I could ride more naturally and worry less about controlling things.
There are lots of reviews out there on cycling trainers and I read way too many of them. But I wanted to end up with something really neat that overcame the problems I had with training indoors. Mostly I wanted to overcome the boredom of endless sweat soaked mindless spinning that I've come to identify indoor training with. Using a smart trainer along with software has let me overcome this and I can say that I actually look forward to my indoor workouts now.
The things I like about the KICKR are that it is built solid, you still ride your road bike but remove the rear wheel so no tire wear, it is both Bluetooth (4.0) and ANT+ and they have an open API so that software developers can integrate it into their products much more easily than some of the more proprietary systems.
You can read the full review of the KICKR on DC Rainmaker's blog if you're interested, he covers everything in excruciating detail. I'll merely add my comments to his and validate or expand on some of the things he mentions.
First of all, this thing is very heavy. I certainly wouldn't want to drop it on my foot or I won't be riding for a while. Since I have no intention of using this thing anywhere else but my home that works out fine. I'll keep my Kurt trainer in the car for race warmups of course. Having worked with mechanical devices for many years, I really appreciate the craftsmanship that went into the KICKR.
There is no part of it that seems cheap or underengineered. You can adjust it for bikes with different wheel sizes and the fold out legs have micro adjusting feet to keep the trainer from wobbling if the floor isn't perfectly flat. I also like that my bike sits right on the floor, no riser needed for the front wheel. So it's easy to get on and off.
The KICKR worked right out of the box with the Wahoo app on my iPhone 4S (the oldest Apple model that has Bluetooth 4). I used the phone app as a first step because you need that to do any firmware upgrades. Turned out there weren't any upgrades required but there were some newer beta releases (careful) out there which require a secret swipe pattern on the phone to access. I have one of the stable betas on there now but I don't think it's any different than the software that the KICKR shipped with.
Of course the real fun started when I paired the KICKR up with TrainerRoad. Running the TrainerRoad application on my Macbook Air with a Garmin ANT+ USB stick (I already had one from my Garmin Vivofit) worked perfectly. It discovered the trainer easily. I had to 'unpair' the previously used InRide sensor from the Kurt trainer so it wouldn't be used anymore.
Of course my heart rate sensor (Scosche) was already paired as was my Garmin cadence/speed sensor which now would be used for cadence data only since there is no rear wheel on the bike anymore; your speed data now comes from the KICKR which it can calculate easily since it knows the RPM of the flywheel and the circumference of a 700C wheel.
While we're on the subject of speed, some explaining is in order. TrainerRoad defaults to ERG mode for the KICKR. What that means is that the TrainerRoad software tells the KICKR how many watts are required and the KICKR then adjusts the resistance in order to generate that many watts. As you know, climbing is generally at a slower RPM expecially out of the saddle. So in order to generate a certain wattage the KICKR will raise the resistance. Conversely, if you are spinning really fast simulating flat or downhill terrain, less watts per pedal revolution are required so the KICKR lowers the resistance. It seems a bit weird at first when you are riding because with a traditional trainer the watts will go up and it will be progressively harder to pedal as cadence is increased.
But since the KICKR lowers the resistance as you increase cadence it actually begins to feel easier to pedal as you pick up the crank RPMs. With that action going on you can really just leave your bike in a medium gear and just try to spin the cadence that the workout requires and the KICKR will auto adjust. But think about this; if you are in a really low gear on the bike, the rear wheel is not turning that many revolutions per revolution of the cranks so measured speed of the bike is low. If you are in a high gear the RPM of the wheel is higher per RPM of the cranks so measured bike speed is higher.
Because of this, when the trainer is in ERG mode (the default) you can disregard the speed you are going completely as it is meaningless anyway. Instead, you focus on the RPMs that the training program is asking you to do and of course be prepared to deliver the power that is required. If you use a lower gear on the bike your speed will look ridiculously low when you upload to Strava or somwhere else but you have to remember that it's the average power you were generating that is what you should be looking at. If you look at some of my workouts on Strava you'll see what I mean. This point about speed only concerns training done while in ERG (ergonomic) mode.
So TrainerRoad works well with the KICKR and will automatically force you to produce the correct power. That's pretty cool. But the real fun from the trainer is competing right? I don't think comparing my results on TrainerRoad with someone else really tells me much about my fitness. Maybe comparing my efforts with previous efforts does but who wants to race against yourself all the time?
One nice thing about TrainerRoad is that there are workouts that sync with different training videos. That includes Sufferfest and a bunch of others. And if they don't have a workout for your particular video you can make your own. In fact you can play any video you want during your workout. I put on a video of last year's TDF during one session.
There are other online services that are centered around competition. So far I have tried two of them, BKOOL and VirtualTraining. BKOOL is the first one I tried. You can enroll monthly (I think it's $15 per month, cancel any time). They keep a repository of training route profiles some that have video and some that don't. They also have a 3D mode that looks cartoonish but let's you see the other riders (ghost or real) on the screen.
There must be thousands of routes on there and because it's based out of Spain there are great European classic climbs and race stages you can ride. The format is that there are ad-hoc races forming up every few minutes and you are welcome to join in one of those or create one yourself. Rides are classified by difficulty so you can choose what you want to do that day. While the BKOOL software works okay, their user interface is not intuitive at all. I still stumble around the software trying to get something simple done. But when it's running it works pretty well.
The one downside to BKOOL is the video. The quality of the videos is pretty good in most cases but they stream it to your computer and it always seems to hang. Maybe the servers are all over in Europe or something but I don't think I have ever done a session where the video streamed correctly. It usually starts out okay but at some point in the workout it starts failing. It will catch up (if it can) so you just keep on riding and hope that it fixes itself. BKOOL has a large base of participants and some really strong folks so the comptitive factor is very good.
BKOOL records your efforts and then you can download the .fit file and do what you want with it. Garmin Connect doesn't like the .fit files that come out of BKOOL so instead I import them into my Mac Rubitrack software and then export them as .tcx and they work fine on Garmin, Strava, etc. BKOOL supports several resistance based trainers and even non-resistance based ones. In fact you can ride without any sensors at all if you don't have any although I don't see the point in that.
The other online racing software I've tried is VirtualTraining from CycleOps. It is also a subscription based service. While they are certainly interested in selling you a CycleOps trainer they fully support the KICKR. The nice difference between BKOOL and VirtualTraining is that VirtualTraining lets you download the workout including the video before you start. That means that Internet lag is not a factor for the video which is really nice. A few of the videos I've used still jump and pause a little bit. The user interface is better on VirtualTraining. And it seems they are continuing to develop things as I have already downloaded an update and I've only been running it a few days so far.
With VirtualTraining there is less of a focus on live competition although it's still available in the form of scheduled races. There are leaderboards for the routes and you can schedule and join races but it's not like BKOOL where the racing is right in your face on the main interface. Also, I've noticed an issue with local time. Although VirtualTraining support says that the local time will automatically match your computer, that isn't working for me. It's always three hours off as if it was Pacific time. So I'm wondering what will happen if I say I want to join a race. Will it be three hours off like the times on my rides? I don't know and so I haven't done any live racing on there yet. Instead I've tried several training rides that are available many which include video of various qualities. It felt really weird when riding in South Africa on the wrong side of the road with cars passing you on the right!
Some differences to note are that TrainerRoad videos simply play and you ride along. The videos on the other services follow your riding so the faster you go the faster the video plays and the sooner you're done. TrainerRoad goes by training time instead of distance. Also, VirtualTraining won't run natively on the Mac, it requires Windows. I run Windows 8.1 via Bootcamp on my Mac Mini and I can also fire up the Bootcamp partition under VMWare Fusion which seems to work okay too as long as I remember to share the USB ANT+ stick to the virtual Windows machine.
If you use Windows you're probably in good shape as all three of these have a Windows based client that works pretty good. You'll need a USB ANT+ stick and/or a Bluetooth 4 transceiver depending on your sensors. Also, TrainerRoad running under windows with BT requires a specific Bluetooth dongle, you can't use the one built into your PC unfortunately. I think the ANT+ will use any of the major ones like Garmin or Suuntu. I bought my dongles online mostly from Amazon.
Yet to try is Zwift which I hear is pretty cool, more of a virtual environment but high quality graphics. I haven't gotten my Zwift invite yet but I know that the folks at Zwift are doing their best to scale up their application and get riders started. Anyway it looks like it may be a cold winter but at least I'll have some fun training indoors this year.