GET SMART: Indoor Trainer Guide
WHILE RECENTLY THUMBING THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA a fascinating post caught my eye and bought the screen to a sudden stop. It was an ‘Ergometer’, a rudimentary early 80’s stationary trainer. Yes trainers have been around a way lot longer than that – who could forget the image of Hubert Opperman training at sea – enroute to the Tour de France in the 1920s. Then there’s the Penny Farthing trainer – one of the earliest known devices (pictured here) and dating back to 1884.
There’s nothing new about indoor training, or the tedium of it. While delving deeper into the subject we chanced upon an article written in 1897 that included the following -
‘One rider, in an endeavour to impart realism into his indoor journeys, contrived an ingenious affair by which he was able to to enjoy in impropitious weather, all the pleasures of a country run without having to endure any inclemency of the elements.
He was a scene painter by profession … it was not sufficient that his surroundings should be four paper walls of a room wherein he ‘rode’. To escape the monotonous sameness he painted on canvas rolls two long country views – fields, villages, towns etc. These he fixed on rollers and placed on either side of his stationary machine …..’
Yes, a vision of Zwift, 123 years ago!
Trainer technology has mimicked mainstream developments over the past hundred and forty or so years, and even exceed it in many areas. Now we have online apps such as Zwift, FullGaz and Trainer Road – virtual reality and in some cases real life reality – right there on a screen in front of us and not only responding to our effort, but controlling and dictating the power we generate.
