Triathlon Gear: Kettler ErgoRace training bicycle

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Triathlon Gear: Kettler ErgoRace training bicycle

A home exercise bike used to be something your parents bought, stuck in a spare room and forgot about. It had a fat saddle, elevated handlebars and plastic straps over the pedals to keep your feet roughly in place, just in case someone felt inclined to ride, although that was hardly ever the case.

Now you can find stationary bikes designed for and ridden by serious riders. Add in accurate measurement of power output and you have a means of tracking your progress as an added incentive to keep training. Tzero tried out one such example, the Kettler ErgoRace. This is a solid piece of German engineering that takes two people to lift but once in place does the job it’s designed to perfectly well.

The ErgoRace has a good range of seat and handle bar positions, both of which can be adjusted vertically and horizontally to roughly match your usual road position. However, the adjustment uses a series of pre-set holes about 1cm apart and so millimetre precision is impossible. Other bikes do this better. The handle bars offer ‘bull horn’ and ‘aero’ riding positions. We felt the padding on the elbow rests was a little thin for extended training sessions but good enough for up to an hour or so. The bike can be fitted with any pedals.

ErgoRace Trainer

The machine constantly monitors power, speed, distance, time, calories and heart rate on an easy-to-read liquid crystal display. You can input your maximum heart rate and power outputs and monitor both as a percentage of maximum. You can also set heart rate alarms. The machine calculates average heart rate and power over a training session, which is useful for monitoring improvements in fitness (or otherwise).

We particularly liked the fixed power option on the Ergo Race. With this you produce the same amount of power independent of cadence. It’s a bit like having infinitely adjustable gears. Basically, you set power to whatever level you choose and start pedalling. Whether your cadence is 60 or 120, the power output is the same. It does feel a little odd though, as it becomes easier to push the pedals as you speed up. On the other hand, you can’t ease off on a training session by pedalling slower as the resistance merely increases to keep power constant.

Alternatively, you can switch to a variable power output setting, which more closely mimics the feel of riding outside: the faster you pedal, the more power you produce. This works well for over-gearing sessions, for example, when you want to push a big gear at a low cadence.

With both fixed and variable settings you can change training intensity in increments of 5W or 25W with a single press of a button, which is great for interval training.

The Ergo Race can also be set up so that the resistance varies according to your heart rate. If you wanted to train at a heart rate of, say, 135 beats per minute, you programme that in and start cycling. The resistance (i.e. power) increases until your heart rate hits the target.

It’s a neat concept and works well for steady-state riding or if you want to keep your heart rate within a narrow range. For interval training, we found the rate at which the resistance increased too slow for an effective workout. In some cases it took nearly five minutes to hit target heart rate.

We primarily used the Ergo Race’s manual settings for maximum control over training sessions. However, it does come with a bundle of pre-set training programmes, both power and heart rate controlled. Additionally, you can programme the machine to design your own workouts.

At £1,399, the Ergo Race is an expensive alternative to a simple turbo trainer, but if it means you can bring cycling indoors for the winter (if you live with people who don’t want your dirty road bike in the house for example, or if you can’t be fussed with frequently changing your tyres after shredding them on a turbo), it’s worth looking at. An additional £179 will buy you TourConcept training software with which you can plug the bike’s output into a computer for an interactive training session. This could certainly liven up a dull training session but unfortunately we weren’t able to test this. Finally, the instruction manual has been translated rather clumsily into English and a little difficult to follow in places. However, programing the bike is straightforward with or without the manual.

For more details, see: www.kettlerdirect.co.uk