Computrainer

I have heard of Computrainer and I really like the concept of riding over courses and getting a 'feel' for something that you are going to be racing over.

Well, I had the opportunity to check out Active Cycle's Computrainer's on Saturday morning as part of a BTS trial. 

We did a 10km course through Central Park which was undulating and we did a flat time trial of 8km's.  There were 8 girls all sharing the same screen so we could all see what place we were coming, what wattage we were all pushing out, etc.  It was very interesting, but also get's the competitive juices flowing.  Needless to say the session was a smash fest!  The air conditioner was on, but I was a dripping wet mess after this session.  I think you would want to have a couple more fans on than what we had.

As for using this for Ironman training, I'm not a huge fan of having this session every Saturday.  One reason being that I think that it is not overly accurate as the girls all beat the guys in the 8km flat time trial and one of the girls in our group was a couple of minutes down which would most definitely not be the case out on the road.  Also, I think that this session has the potential to be a smash fest every week due to the very nature of pitting everyone against each other.  This session is proposed to be on a Saturday morning so would end up being part of the long bike ride; I just think it is too intense to be part of that ride.  If it was during the week and it was 1 to 1 1/2 hours I would be more keen and this could be our speed session for the week.  Craig and I rode there (45mins ride) and rode back and I was completely shattered for the rest of the day, which is probably a combination of the sweat loss and the nature of the session.  Also, if this session is not accurate it has the ability to really do your head in, particularly if you think you are going pretty well on the bike and then you end up lagging behind on the Computrainer, so you start to question your ability.  I know that a similar Computrainer that Craig was a part of leading up to IM Australia last year did just that.

I'll give my feedback to Mark and see what happens.