Transform your bike for indoors; cycle the Tour de France at home – Wall Street Journal

A keen cyclist myself, I've always preferred being out on my bike in nature, rather than being confined to a muggy indoor spinning class. The fresh air, and the sense of achievement when you finally conquer that particularly challenging hill takes some beating. Not to mention the thrill of beating your previous time. Sadly, Covid-19 has brought all major sporting events to an end for now and in response, virtual races have become a kind of 'new norm'. Admittedly, racing your friends along a virtual course has its own benefits, as Nicole Nguyen points out. – Claire Badenhorst .How to turn your bike into a smart at-home exercise machine.By Nicole Nguyen.___STEADY_PAYWALL___.Fine. I'm not actually racing in the Tour de France, but I am riding in the virtual Tour de France on one of the same courses the pros are riding this year because of the pandemic. .The platform is called Zwift, which allows athletes to race in a Mario Kart-like world from their living rooms and patios. What I found out is that indoor bike training is actually fun and very high tech. Plus, you don't need to buy a Peloton to do it. If you already have a bike, you can use that. Bad news: if you've never tinkered with your bike before, choosing the right accessories and installing the equipment can be intimidating..How to get started.So here's how to set up an at-home smart exercise machine in a few simple steps. Let's talk gear first. Yep, you'll need a bike. Most kinds of bikes you ride outdoors will do. Then you'll need a bunch of other stuff like a mat, towel, fan, and a screen (like a phone or iPad) to stream the workout, plus, a table, or mount to prop the device on. Finally, you'll need a trainer. This is what holds your bike in place. .There are two types. A classic trainer will need some extra accessories to make it sync with your phone. Then there's a smart trainer which already has all the sensors you need to measure stats like your speed, distance, power, and cadence. The trainer can pair with your phone using Bluetooth and you can wirelessly control the bike's resistance, so it feels like you're actually going up a hill. .On the lower end, is the Tacx Flow Smart at $360, which I liked because installation is as easy as swapping the back wheel skewer. I opted for the Wahoo Kickr which requires you to take your back wheel off. It's on the pricier side at $1,200, but it's smoother and quieter. .Figuring out the setup wasn't easy at first, so I phoned an Olympian. Joe Maloy is a triathlete who competed in the 2016 Rio Olympics. ."My biggest tip would be to check the gear you're in. You want to be in the smallest chainring in the front and then you want to be in the smallest chainring in the back. It's not a gear you'd normally ride in.".It's ultimately worth the struggle. Joe actually prefers some aspects of stationary riding to biking outdoors. ."There are the inadvertent stops at stoplights and traffic signals. You end up slowing down because of cars coming out. None of that happens when you're on a trainer; it's just you pedalling.".Now get going.Now that you have everything set up, here's how to make going nowhere fun. You could use something like the Peloton app, which costs $13 a month if you really miss the indoor cycling class experience. I tried it on the trainer and it was fine. You can use the trainer's app to match Peloton class's cadence and resistance, but without the Peloton bike, you can't compare your stats to other riders. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed using Zwift, which costs $15 a month. It's amassed a huge community of fellow riders, including Joe. ."I really like the way there's a ton of other athletes on there and there have been more opportunities for me to join friends on indoor rides.".You can ride with friends and private meetups or join one of the public events held nearly every hour of every day. Zwift can also automatically control a smart trainer's resistance to match the hills in the virtual course. If you draft behind another rider, you can go farther and faster in the game, just like in real life. Unlike real life, there's no steering. There's just pedalling forward on and on until you stop. .Needless to say, I did not win the tour. But the community and all the encouraging messages from riders around the world made 377th place not sot bad..Write to Nicole Nguyen at nicole.nguyen@wsj.com.*This article originally appeared on the Wall Street Journal

Transform your bike for indoors; cycle the Tour de France at home – Wall Street Journal

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