Ever since I first watched the IRONMAN World Championship, I wanted a Felt IA. And now I have one. On Zwift.
For years I worked hard to get to level 37 to buy a digital Felt IA from the in-game shop. I made it to level 33. Then in December, they redid all of the levels and dropped the minimum level requirement for that bike down to 16.
During COVID, JP started organising a Zwift league for the triathlon club. 13 series later and it is still going! Mostly thanks to JP’s relentless organisation skills. It’s been wonderful to have a way to stay connected to the club.
I accentually got myself promoted to the top division last series which meant racing against people much better than me. And led to some exhausting evenings with Amy chasing me down for most of the race. But thanks to only three dragon league riders showing up for all five races I managed to scoop myself a bronze 😆.
January has been awful. I haven’t taken my bike outside since Christmas Eve. But it’s been good for Zwift. I’ve finally reached level 18 and unlocked the Specialized Shiv Disc TT bike. I also completed the Everest challenge (not all at once) and unlocked the Trek Emonda. Onwards to the Tron bike!
How do we avoid drowning in our own sweat when indoor cycling? If you use a turbo trainer, you will probably be familiar with it being one of the sweatiest things you can do. In this video, I’ll give you five ideas for making it manageable.
The Tacx ANT+ antenna is an ANT+ dongle that connects to your computer via USB. It is designed to allow you to connect your ANT+ sensors such as speed, cadence, heart rate, etc, to your PC or laptop so that you can run Zwift or any other computer-based bike training software.
The problem with most dongles is the drop-outs. This is a disaster for Zwift as it can ruin your intervals or worse when in a group ride, get dropped by the peloton, at which point you have no chance of getting back on again.
The Tacx unit tries to overcome this by providing a long cable so that you can plug it in and move it closer to your bike or smart trainer. It’s a heavy unit with a sturdy base so it will not get knocked around. The unit feels solid and high-quality.
That said, I was still getting drop-outs. If anything, they were worse than when I was connecting my gear with Bluetooth. The Garmin head unit on my bike receives the signal the whole time, so it only seems to be the computer connectivity that is the problem.
The Stages Power L Shimano 105 is a single-sided power meter that replaces the offside crank arm on your bike. You pull off your existing crank arm and fit the Stages Power drop-in replacement to get some power measuring data.
Stages produce a full range of different versions for each groupset, so you need to match the correct one. In this case, my bike has a Shimano 105 groupset, so I needed that version. As it is the offside crank arm, chainrings are not important, but if you want the dual-sided one, you will need to match your chainring as well.
The beauty of them is that they plug in and go. You don’t need to change your pedals, and if you are comfortable taking it on and off, you could even swap it between bikes (if you had another with the same groupset).
The unit transmits on both Bluetooth and ANT+. In the past, there have been issues with drop-outs between Garmin and Stages. I haven’t experienced any of this; it has worked perfectly with my Edge 1030 and with TrainerRoad on my iPhone. I have had some drop-outs on Zwift, though, but I’ve had a lot of problems with Zwift regardless of setup.
Battery life is reasonable. It takes a 2032 watch battery which has lasted me about six months. The battery is easily accessible so looks simple to change.
Without calibrating it against another power meter, it is difficult to say how accurate it is. But, on the turbo trainer, it has worked like a dream. Outside has mostly been fine, too, although I have occasionally got spikes of power way higher than I would expect.
I’ve also had a bit of squeaking. Whether it is because the crank arm has come loose or because there is an issue with the bottom bracket on my bike is not clear.
In this video, I’ll review the Lifeline TT-02 fluid turbo trainer. It’s an indoor bike trainer sold by Wiggle. It’s an entry-level model that is perfect if you want to try out indoor cycling without spending a huge amount of money.
Setup is simple, and I’ll show you in the video. Pop the legs out, lock the bike in place and pop the riser block under the front wheel. You’ll need to replace your quick release skewer with the one supplied. If you have a thru-axle bike, see my review of the Kinetic Traxle.
With it being a fluid trainer, there are no controls to fiddle around with. The resistance gets exponentially harder as you pedal faster.
As it’s not a smart trainer, it’s not compatible with Zwift or TrainerRoad out-of-the-box: you’ll need a power meter or speed sensor on your bike to make it work.
You can listen to the noise levels on the video as I ride at 100, 200, 400 and 700 Watts.
