Getting Started on Rollers

Ok, I am going to give rollers a shot but I am worried I am going to
shoot out the picture window or end up in the petunias. Any advice on
rollers? I hear they are great for your spin and off season fitness.

Do you have any advice on how to start using rollers. It reminds me of
snow boarding, a steep learning curve. So any thoughts or good ideas
would how to get started? Maybe use a doorway, training wheels...

Any help would be appreciated.

John

" wrote in
oups.com:

Ok, I am going to give rollers a shot but I am worried I am going to
shoot out the picture window or end up in the petunias. Any advice on
rollers? I hear they are great for your spin and off season fitness.

Do you have any advice on how to start using rollers. It reminds me of
snow boarding, a steep learning curve. So any thoughts or good ideas
would how to get started? Maybe use a doorway, training wheels...

Any help would be appreciated.

John



You won't shoot off since there is no forward momentum except in the
rotation of the wheels. If you do fall off, it is more like you move
about three feet forward and then fall over in slow motion. It is also
easier to stay balanced the faster you make the wheels go (or at least it
seemed that way to me), so I found it helped to start out with the
resistance set on low so I could turn a relatively big gear.

Riding in a doorway is good, but when I started I preferred to have
something I could grab onto and pull myself back up and it is hard to
find a place to grab on a door frame. My recollection is learning by
riding next to a big stuffed chair where I could grab onto the back if I
rode off the drums. It was easier grabbing the chair back since it was
in line with my hand whereas a door frame was vertical. The fraction of
a second it took to turn my hand to grab on made the difference between
falling off and staying upright, plus I would rather fall onto a flat
floor than into a wall or door jamb.

One thing is I have found it really hard to watch cycling videos while
riding rollers. I kept unintentionally steering to follow the road on
the television.

--
Bill Asher

On 12 Nov 2005 21:38:15 -0800, "
wrote:

Ok, I am going to give rollers a shot but I am worried I am going to
shoot out the picture window or end up in the petunias. Any advice on
rollers? I hear they are great for your spin and off season fitness.

Do you have any advice on how to start using rollers.

Get a friend, ideally an experienced cyclist or coach, to spot you the
first time.

JT

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John Forrest Tomlinson wrote:
Do you have any advice on how to start using rollers.

Get a friend, ideally an experienced cyclist or coach, to spot you the
first time.

Or a doorway. And I learned not to hang a towel over the handlebars. And
notify the downstairs neighbours that, no, you're not building a jet
engine.

The most useful addition I think is a stable step-up that doesn't get in
the way. It's always a little tricky standing on the metal sidebars with
my metal shoeplates.

--
E. Dronkert

William Asher wrote:
I kept unintentionally steering to follow the road on the television.

They have curved rollers that help you stay centered, I never tried them
though. I put wide, bright orange tape left and right on the front drum to
give me a hint that it's time to move back. Besides seeing it, I can also
hear it when I'm touching the tape. *If* I wasn't wearing headphones...

--
E. Dronkert

wrote:
Any advice on
rollers? I hear they are great for your spin and off season fitness.

Maybe they're good for your spin, but good spin isn't that important to
road cyclists.

Do you have any advice on how to start using rollers. It reminds me of
snow boarding, a steep learning curve.

Use a piece of plywood that spans the frame as a platform. It can be
tricky to start (and especially, stop) if you're wearing cleats and trying
to put your foot down on the narrow edge of the frame.

Snow boarding doesn't have a particularly steep learning curve.

Make sure that a plumb line dropped from the center of your front axle
is centered (or slighly) behind the axle of your front roller's axle.
Lots of wheel speed seems to help.

William Asher says...

You won't shoot off since there is no forward momentum except in the
rotation of the wheels. If you do fall off, it is more like you move
about three feet forward and then fall over in slow motion.

Bzzzt! Wrongo! I used to ride rollers in the basement and twice rode off of
them. Fortunately, we had a bunch of boxes stacked up against the wall I ran
into that was a good 15 feet away. The rubber streak on the floor was at least
7' long, so the rear wheel had enough momentum to be spinning hard for that
distance. Of course, the REASON I went off the rollers those times was because
I was doing a fairly fast spin interval and was concentrating more on my spin
than the direction I was going. Those rubber streaks on the basement floor were
great conversation pieces.

"Mad Dog" wrote in message
...
William Asher says...

You won't shoot off since there is no forward momentum except in the
rotation of the wheels. If you do fall off, it is more like you move
about three feet forward and then fall over in slow motion.

Bzzzt! Wrongo! I used to ride rollers in the basement and twice rode off
of
them. Fortunately, we had a bunch of boxes stacked up against the wall I
ran
into that was a good 15 feet away. The rubber streak on the floor was at
least
7' long, so the rear wheel had enough momentum to be spinning hard for
that
distance. Of course, the REASON I went off the rollers those times was
because
I was doing a fairly fast spin interval and was concentrating more on my
spin
than the direction I was going. Those rubber streaks on the basement
floor were
great conversation pieces.


You did a 7 foot long burnout? I don't believe it. How much do you weigh? 30
lbs?

Carl Sundquist says...

You did a 7 foot long burnout? I don't believe it. How much do you weigh? 30
lbs?

I could care less if you believe it or not. I have witnii. To tell you the
truth, 7' is an estimate made by stepping it off. It was about a foot over 2
steps and my steps are very close to 3'. I wish I'd taken a picture of it
because it was so cool, sort of a soft, curvy "L" shape. The floor was painted
cement, the rear tire was a Vittoria training sew-up at 105 psi, I was at a
cadence of about 180 rpm in 50/11 gearing. Go try it out yourself.

Our team used to do fund raisers at a local mall every year where we'd ride
rollers round the clock. We had 2 sets of rollers and we'd keep at least one of
them spinning from Friday through Sunday night. The preferred dismount was to
ride off. Made for some interesting crashes. 3 to 4' burnouts were not all
that uncommon, but the cement was coarser than the painted floor in my basement.
Average burnout there was probably 12 to 14", longer ones happened when the
rider came off the rollers off balance and kept trying to pedal. Great party
activity!

30 pounds? I wish I could generate my mediocre power outputs with a 30 pound
body. Take me to Ventoux!