It’s here! It’s here! My brand new bike. It doesn’t have wheels or a chain, but it’s still a bike.
Sort of.
Kind of.
It’s a smart bike. That’s a bike special-built to ride indoors. In that way it’s like my old Peloton bike. But this one is for cyclists, not just people who want to get fit. It’s a Wahoo KICKR bike, and it arrived today. I’ll be going into lots of detail about it over the coming months, but for now, I just want to shout it from the rooftops:
MY NEW BIKE IS HERE!!!! <<<insert Python cheer>>>
This is a replacement for my Wahoo KICKR smart trainer, which bit the dust a little while ago. And to avoid confusion, I’ll define each device, since they’ll sound the same to the uninitiated. This is the KICKR trainer:
The bike attaches to the cassette and off you go (in actuality, you go nowhere, since it’s stationary, but you get the point).
The smart bike is the entire riding device. It’s not really a bike—it’s a frame that’s vaguely reminiscent of a bicycle. This picture isn’t good, as there’s a lot of stuff right in that area, but this will have to do.
All the electronics are built into the smart bike, and you don’t attach it to anything, the way you attach a regular bike to a smart trainer—you just get on it and pedal.
At this point the question must be asked: if the trainer died, why did I go with an entire smart bike instead of just replacing the trainer?
Glad you asked. I did it for several reasons. For one, I never really loved the trainer. It had numerous issues with the electronics. I don’t know if others have had similar problems, but whenever I tried to mess with Bluetooth settings, for instance, the KICKR had a tendency to go berserk. I reset that machine more times than I can remember.
Another big sticking point was that it wasn’t something almost anyone else could use. My old steel LeMond road bike was a large frame, and for anyone under about 6-foot tall to use it required lots of labor-intensive adjustments.
The KICKR bike, by contrast, is easily adjustable for any size rider. I have lots of kids, and many of them would like to use the indoor trainer, but the old system mostly made it impossible. For me, that’s a pretty big deal.
Another advantage that will impact a lot of people, but didn’t affect me, is that many serious cyclists with high-end bikes are hesitant, with good reason, to put them on trainers. Making a bike stationary subjects it to forces it doesn’t have on the road, and there have been reports of bikes being ruined by trainers. (I don’t know at this point if there’s data to support the contention that stationary trainers break bicycles, but there’s plenty of worry in the community about this, and some anecdotal evidence.) In any case, I didn’t use one of my regular bikes on the trainer, so it wasn’t a concern for me. I’m just mentioning it for those who are considering a smart bike vs. a smart trainer.
The main thing that pushed me toward the KICKR bike in the end was the deal I got on it. There’s a newer version of the bike out, and Wahoo seems to be wanting to get rid of their inventory of v.1 bikes, so the discounts are massive. I got this for $2,300, when it retailed a month or two earlier for no less than $3,500, and often for its original price of $4,000. That, my friends, is a bargain.
The KICKR bike is said to have the most realistic ride feel of all smart bikes, which greatly appeals to me. And my old road bike, when compared to my new bikes, just doesn’t feel good when I’m on it. It’s the old style of aggressive position—very hunched over, and not every ergonomic. I’ve made what changes I could to make it more comfy, but I still don’t like it on longer indoor rides. I’m hoping the infinite adjustability of the KICKR bike will alleviate that.
And last but not least, I bought the KICKR bike because I’m me. I just can’t help myself, you know? (Everyone who knows me is now nodding in unison…)
The bummer is that I’ve had a nasty cold for most of this week, so I won’t be able to do much more than get it set up for now. But the minute I’m feeling on the upswing, I’m getting on that bike.
Stay tuned.
(Are you thinking of getting a smart bike or smart trainer? Or have you made the choice? Let me know in the comments below.)