Choosing a Helmet

A new helmet is on my upgrade wish list for the new year. My current mid-range Bell helmet is merely adequate—it's a bit heavy and on hot days it's quite stifling. I've been browsing roadbikereview.com and other review sites to get a sense of my choices, and it's pretty tough going. On RBR, there are a few helmets that get a large volume of reviews (Giro Pneumo and Atmos and Bell Sweep and Eclipse), and then the number of reviews drop off substantially. I like what I read about how like and cool the Atmos is, but the price is pretty steep. What is the cooling effect worth? That's the big question that I need to figure out. Atmos is all about having as many vents as possible, while helmets like Lazer have a different approach, with few vents that are much larger, and a seemingly innovative Rollsys system with a rolling wheel on the top of the helmet to secure it too your head. The Lazer Genesis is around $150, the Atmos is around $135, and the Bell Sweep is $120. I can't imagine spending over $150 on a helmet...seems so much to spend, but I'm open-minded.


If you have any suggestions, I'd love your input.

EA Active vs. Wii Fit Plus

EA Active for Wii has introduced yet another workout alternative to cycling, and judging by how sore I am after three days, I'm loving the alternative. When will I have time to get back on the bike, considering my very real time limitations for working out?

After working out on Wii Fit and then Wii Fit Plus for almost every day starting in February when I dislocated my shoulder in a skiing accident, I'm absolutely convinced of the value of Wii as part of a personal fitness regimen. EA Active takes daily Wii to a new level. In Wii Fit Plus, even the most intensive combination of workouts get me burning just over 100 calories in 30 minutes, whereas EA Active allows me to burn over 200 calories in 30 minutes. It's not just the calories, however; EA Active has a much greater variety and range of exercises because of the use of the resistance band and nunchuck, and I'm convinced that I'm getting a much better all-around workout. Then there's the 30 day challenge, in which new exercises are introduced at a reasonable pace, and different muscle groups are targeted on different days, allowing those other sore muscles some down time for a day or so. Lots of jumping, running, leaping, bicep curls, kicks, cardio boxing, dancing, and my personal favorite, tennis. I love tennis so much that I created my own high-intensity tennis workout that lasts around 10 minutes and burns about 100 calories. I've done that tennis workout four times in two days! Who cares about the calories—this is the most fun I've ever had with Wii. Tennis in EA Active is surprisingly realistic and challenging, particularly the overhead smash.

The only frustration so far is when Wii doesn't seem to understand what my movements. Both Gail and I have experienced this problem. The other annoying thing is trying to simultaneously hold the resistance band handles and the Wiimote and nunchuck. Oh, and then there's learning the exercises properly and having the patience to sit through the introductory videos. Finally, there's the lame motivational component. "You OWN this exercise!" "You are poetry in motion!" The male workout companion sounds like a Canadian surfer dude transplant to SoCal. Just shut up already, dude. This isn't inspiration, it's intrusive and annoying. One more thing: the music sucks.

These small complaints aside, EA Active makes Wii Fit and Wii Fit Plus seem like child's play. Don't get me wrong, I'll always love Wii Fit, but I don't anticipate using it for much more than the bicycling and a few other fun activities like downhill skiing and skateboarding, after the results derived from Wii Fit.

Drivetrain Upgrades

As anyone who has ever shopped for cycle components can attest, there are so many choices to make that you can easily get psyched out, especially if you have as tight a budget as I do. Tonight, after several years of contemplation, I finally made the choice to upgrade shoes and pedals. What a relief to finally arrive at a decision and feel good about it.

For those of you living in or near Central NY, Glenn Swan has a fantastic shop on Mt. Pleasant Rd., just outside of Ithaca. It's certainly off the beaten path, but well worth the trip. You'll come back again and again, and just marvel at how much great gear he keeps in his modest shop. Great prices, but more importantly, incredibly knowledgeable and no-nonsense advise.

I've been riding clipless pedals since around '84, around the time when Shimano's SPD pedal system came on the market. What a difference it makes to be one with your pedal, but as with all technology, improvements keep on coming. I never kept up, and have continued to ride with the original SPD system, even after the introduction of SPD-SL, the Look Keo, Speedplay, Egg Beaters, etc. Yeah, I'll admit to some serious pedal envy, but until this year it didn't matter that much to me. Now that I have a road bike, every component choice matters more. For example, Ultegra shifters and derailleurs were an important choice, as was a carbon crank and the Selle San Marco Aspide saddle, which I love.

My new bike came with generic one-side SPD road pedals, so I couldn't justify spending even more right off the bat, and since my Shimano shoes were the old school two-bolt system and wouldn't accommodate a three bolt cleat, I was overwhelmed by the sticker shock of new shoes AND pedals. However, after a year of very intensive riding with a less than satisfactory shoe/pedal combination, I finally was able to justify the upgrade.

My pedal choice was the Shimano 105 SPD-SL pedal. In a way it was a conservative decision. I toyed with the idea of Speedplay, but something about the complexity of the cleat had me a bit worried, particularly the thought of cleat-related problem while riding far from home. Yeah, it's unlikely, but also Speedplay has so many products with such a range of options that I was overwhelmed by the decisions just within one type of pedal. Then there's the price, not only of the pedal itself, but of replacement cleats. I briefly considered Look Keo Classics, but I wasn't so sure about buying a polycarbonate pedal. It just didn't seem like it would hold up as well as the Shimanos. I feel like the steel Shimanos just seem more robust and are likely to be more reliable and last longer. You can't really argue with their track record or the extensive testing process. Also, Shimano has only three flavors of this model; the 105, the Ultegra, and the Dura-Ace. There's a $60 price differential between the 105s ($75) and the Ultegra ($135), and enough online reviewers and serious cyclists opined that the weight differential was probably not worth the big price jump. Since Dura-Ace was just out of the question for my budget, once I decided on Shimano, it wasn't hard to chose the 105s.

Shoes are a whole other torturous decision. Ratcheting clasp or straight-up velcro? Carbon fiber soles or nylon with steel reinforcement for added stiffness with a weight penalty? Buy online and return several times until I land the right fit/price combination or buy locally and be assured of a good fit? I chose to buy locally with no regrets. The Louis Garneau Ergoair 2 don't have a ratcheting clasp or a carbon sole, but they fit nicely, are plenty stiff, and cost less than $100, so I'm very pleased with that choice as well.

After testing them briefly on the trainer, I know I made a good choice. Yeah, $175 is not insignificant, but it's a huge performance and comfort upgrade for the price. (I'm not sure if comfort is the word I'm looking for...perhaps stability is a better term.) The concept of float (how the heel can have wiggle room to pivot a little bit without losing firm contact with the pedal) was only an abstraction until now. Yeah, they only allow 3 degrees of float, and Speedplay offers much more, but after so many years of having essentially no float and frequently accidentally forcing myself out of my pedals, any amount of float feels luxurious. Even more significantly, the larger platform feels so much more substantial, and the stiff soles will certainly translate to less wasted energy and more power heading directly to the drivetrain. I can't wait to test this out on the open road, but it'll be a while.

Organizing the Resistance

Thanks to my friend George, we are now the proud owners of an early '90s vintage NordicTrack Skier exercise machine. It took me a while to decide whether or not to adopt this odd looking torture equipment resistance-based exercise unit, but I'm very glad that we chose to be its new parents and add it to our growing resistance movement. After one quick and very fun workout, I'm sold. Brilliant design...very simple and very effective, just like the 1UP USA resistance bike trainer. It just works, and it does a fairly decent job of emulating the real nordic skiing experience. I just have to figure out why my heels occasionally hit the back stop thingermajigger.

While the bike trainer certainly won't be gathering dust, this seems like a very nice companion activity to cycling in place. I haven't been cross-country skiing in many years, and who knows, maybe this is the year to get back into it, especially if we can convince the boys about how fun it truly is. Maybe I need to organize a ski party in the north country. Millions of Scandinavians can't be wrong! Soon it'll be time to build a sauna, dig a pond in the backyard and ferment some vodka. Oh, and how about some raw, salted herring?

Hunkered Down

Snow is in the air! Now that I'm hunkered down and all set up for spinning in the basement with my trusty trainer, let the snow fly, I say. The big challenge now is to keep up the schedule of indoor biking workouts three times weekly through the winter. This is unchartered territory for me, as I've never maintained an indoor training schedule of any kind before. It's so much harder to get motivated to ride with a trainer than to ride on on the road. How do professional athletes do it?

One of the obvious reasons that I slowly gained weight through my 30s and 40s and had such a hard time losing weight is my strong aversion to exercise. For my whole life I've held stubbornly to my position that exercise for exercise sake is just plain boring and that I'll never do that. If it's not fun, I'm not doing it. I've been able to hold true to this mindset all through this year of substantial weight loss and improved fitness by doing a Wii Fit workout almost daily since February in addition to road biking all summer. For those of you who haven't experienced the magic of Wii Fit, you have so much fun working out that you don't resent it. I've never been into gaming, but I can do Wii Fit for an hour or more without getting bored, and the cumulative effect is incredibly beneficial. The Wii Fit experience is data driven, and I've written in prior posts about my obsession with gathering and analyzing data from my rides. Wii Fit Plus improves tremendously on an already fantastic product, with lots of new fun activities like Island Cycling, Obstacle Course, Birds-Eye Bullseye, Skateboarding, Boxing, and Snowball Fight. In addition, it tracks an estimate of calories burned, and analyzing the graph of your weight loss is very motivating.

So why am I rethinking my anti-exercise stance? Wii Fit alone will not keep me in shape over the winter months, given the limited amount of time I have set aside to work out. That leaves the bike trainer, not the most fun thing in the world, so it means...gulp...exercise for exercise sake. Yikes! Can I succeed? I'm definitely motivated, so hopefully that will make all the difference.

Ask any cyclist who has tried riding on even the best trainer—it's a pale substitute to the euphoria of road biking. It's a good workout but you have to work hard on making the environment comfortable and find distractions that work for you. I get bored quickly with my music mixes, so I have to keep on top of this issue and make a few new playlists in anticipation of my next workouts. It's all about mind games, but there's no doubt that my positive state of mind, thanks to many months of intense aerobic workouts, will contribute greatly to the success of this workout strategy.