Tacx Flow Smart Trainer

My old indoor trainer, a Cycleworks Magneto, was getting long in the tooth and the local bike shop was having a good sale on new trainers. I also was getting a little bored with the linear resistance thing, so was jonesing for a “smart” trainer.

What I wasn’t looking to do was drop $1000 on a bike trainer that I would only use for a couple of months a year or one that required a ton of work to set up. That ruled out most of the smart trainers. They all seem to be wheel off set ups that require buying a trainer and a rear cassette. That does allow for more accurate power adjustment, simulating road feel, and quieter use. It also looked like it allows for greater “true” power ranges.

I was excited to see that the bike shop offered one wheel on smart trainer option and that it was not crazy expensive. The Tacx Flow was only $350 and allows me to pop the bike into it with a simple click. One the bike is on the trainer, you should do a quick calibration to make sure the resistance and power readings are accurate.

Time to get bike on trainer and calibrated is under five minutes. It makes it is easy for those days when I want to ride but the rain gets in the way.

The Flow easily connects to several apps like Tacx’s own app and Strava. Getting the Tacx app connected to the trainer was a snap. It comes with a free month trail period, so it was a good way to get started. The app has a wide variety of rides. Some have nice videos and others are just GPS tracks, but they cover the gamut of rides. There are nice easy rides through the countryside or along the shore and there are long brutal climbs. The did experience a few hiccups where the videos would buffer, but the bike is far away from the hotspot and I have a tween who lives on TikTok. The other odd thing about the app was that if it connected to my bike’s cadence sensor, it would not record cadence data. I’m not sure how the trainer figures out cadence better than a sensor stuck on my pedal. I decided to pony up for the $100 yearly subscription without trying any other apps. I don’t know any Strava heads and liked the movies.

The trainer can also be driven by my fenix watch which can be loaded up with GPS courses from Garmin Connect. In some ways this a better way to use the trainer as the data integrates better with my other Garmin data and I can train on rides that I actually take instead of dreaming of far off lands.

In either case, the trainer gives me a better workout than the linear resistance of a non-smart trainer. It is more fun to have to deal with simulated climbs or to run a workout where the resistance changes to simulate sprints.

I also like the fact that I get power readings from the trainer. Power is not a metric I would pay $1000 dollars to add to my bike, but for $350 it is a nice to have. I might miss it once I am back on the roads and trails.

Is the Flow a great smart trainer? No. It is not a great trainer. It doesn’t simulate road feel and can really only simulate up to a 5 percent grade with any accuracy. It also requires regular calibration to make sure the bike’s tire and the trainer are properly connected.

It is however a great trainer for my needs. It didn’t break the bank. It is easy to set up and use all year long. When properly calibrated it can programmatically fake more than a 5 percent grade and really most of the places I ride don’t have very steep hills.

For a recreational rider in his 50’s with moderate needs. It is more than enough.

I would rather spend the extra money on upgrading my mountain bike to full suspension or enjoying fancy ciders after a long ride.

Garmin Fenix 6X

 I am a sucker for fitness tracking despite the fact that it can feed into my hypochondriac tendencies.

Knowing my heart rate and stress level on a minute by minute basis is both interesting and terrifying. It is even more terrifying when I get a spurious elevated heart rate alarm. Usually, the alert is because I there is water on between the sensor and my arm or I am wearing the watch too loosely. OHR sensors are finicky buggers no matter how good they are reported to be.

Just before COVID closed down the world and stories of sudden pulse OX reading sending people into ERs never to return, Garmin released it new 6 line of the Fenix which included a built in pulse OX sensor as a standard feature. The line also has a bunch of other tweaks like a better screen, longer battery life, the new body battery metric, and a few other things.

If I am being totally honest, none of these were a good reason to upgrade from my trusty Fenix 3X. It still was getting solid battery life, had all the mapping features I needed, and did a great job at all of the basic stuff like step counting and route tracking.

It was a combination of pulse OX and a misguided sense that shopping therapy would ease the malaise of COVID spring that spurred my decision to upgrade. A large REI divided also helped.

The pulse OX feature also gave me pause. Would that information be helpful or just propel me into a spiral of fruitless doom checking and panic?

Since having the watch since April, I can say that the pulse OX feature is an interesting gimmick. I have mine set just to track it during sleep and if I want to do spot checks. It is not a medical grade pulse OX measurement and from many reviews it seems to be about 1-2% lower than a medical grade instrument. Like the OHR, the accuracy depends on a lot of factors including skin color, light conditions, movement, tightness of the watch band, movement, and sleeping positions.

What I have learned from it is that I probably don't have sleep apnea since my pulse OX reading is pretty steady over night with only a few occasional drops to the low 90s. I do occasionally check during the day, and it is reassuring to see that it is always 95% or better. I imagine that if I got reading in the 70-80% range I would worry, but I imagine I would know I was sick well before then.

Aside from the pulse OX feature, I do like the watch better than my old 3X. The UI is better designed and the bigger, brighter screen is nice on my aging eyes. Other nice, but not game changing, features are improved sleep tracking, the body battery, and the fact that I now get a VO2 max reading during walking activities.

I used to have to adjust wake and sleep times constantly with the 3X, but with the 6X I never need to bother. It is also cool to see how sleep stages, respiration rates, and pulse OX vary over the course of sleep. Again, more interesting that useful.

The body battery feature is a new composite metric that I don't fully understand. Basically, it is supposed to be a reflection of how much energy you have. It fluctuates based on stress (measured by HRV), heart rate, activity level, and a bunch of crazy math I will never understand. It seems relatively accurate in reflecting how I feel. Sometimes it seems low compared to how I feel until I try to go do something active. If the watch reading is low, I invariably bonk way sooner than I would have expected based on how I felt. Is this just me being susceptible to suggestion or a true reflection of my bodies energy reserves? I would love to believe that I am smart enough not to listed to a watch....

The VO2 max from walks is, according to Garmin, is not as reliable as the measure you would get from a run or a bike ride with power meters. Since I loathe running and refuse to spend the money on power meters, it is the reading I have. It was nice to watch the metric improve over the COVID summer when my only outlets for stress were long walks, longer bike rides, and the occasional shred through the local trails. Sadly, now that the COVID winter is settling in and opportunities for riding and walking have gone down, the metric is also trending downward.

The one really nice feature is Garmin Pay support. Being able to use the watch as a touch-less payment form has been great. Yes, I can use my phone as well. However, the watch is right on my wrist and doesn't require me to stare at the phone. Also, the watch is easier to wash and has almost no chance of being pressed against my face.

The Fenix is more expensive and way less sexy than an Apple Watch. The Fenix, unlike the Apple Watch, has multi-day battery life. With daily hour long bike rides, I was getting five days between charges. Now that I am not using the GPS as often I go more like 7 or eight days between charges.

The Fenix also connects to all the bike sensors I already own and feed all the data back into the Garmin ecosystem to which I am tied. There is also Apple Health integration, but it is not the best.

The Fenix is also, as far as I can tell, far more durable than an Apple Watch. I am not sure I would wear an Apple Watch sea kayaking or use it on a multi-day hike or expect an Apple Watch to survive a nasty mountain biking crash. The Fenix feels like it can take pretty much anything I can throw it at.

Am I happy with the purchase? I am not unhappy with the purchase. I could have stuck with my old Fenix until the battery gave out and been satisfied with it. The 6X is a nice, but not earth shattering, upgrade.

Training Toys

I've been really unmotivated this winter. The idea of sitting in the basement pedaling my bike on the hamster wheel listening to sci-fi podcasts makes me snuggle under the covers. I just cannot seem to find the will power to get on the bike.
One of the issues is that the cycle computer on the bike is broken and I cannot watch my speed or cadence. I've got no way to challenge myself if I don't have any data.
So I decided to get a new computer. I wanted to get one with both cadence and heart rate. I also wanted one that would be easy to switch to my primary bike in the spring. The last feature I wanted was that it read speed from the rear wheel because the front wheel doesn't move in the trainer.
To get features I wanted, I was looking at dropping a minimum of two bills. Cat Eye makes a nice unit. Garmin also makes a new unit that does everything, but it costs about three bills. The advantage of the Garmin is that it keeps the history over time. You can watch your progress.
While I was doing research at REI one of the sales people suggested a Forerunner. They are a GPS enabled wrist computer that does heart rate, cadence, and speed from the rear wheel. They also store history. The big advantage over a bike computer is that you can use them for more than just biking. For example, I can use it when doing training walks with H.
There are a bunch of models ranging from two to four bills. I chose the cheapest model. It had all the features I needed. The biggest differences were size, auto synching with a computer, and the calorie computation algorithm. The unit is a big red brick. It must be plugged into the computer with a USB cord. The newer models use a heart rate based calorie computation algorithm.
After a week of using it, I like it. It definitely makes riding the bike more interesting. I can watch the speed and my heart rate. I can also set up different work outs.
For the most part it is accurate. The cadence meter drops out every now and then, but that isn't too big a deal. It's not like I am training for a serious event. I used it on a walk and the pace monitoring occasionally spiked.
Despite the minor glitches, the data is fun. Being able to track my progress keeps things interesting.
It is a little sad that I need a toy to keep me motivated, but such is life in the modern plugged in world. What is important is that I'm back in the saddle.

Kayaking, Blogging, iPhoning

While I tend to cleave towards extreme simplicity (I ride a single speed bike and paddle with a piece of wood) I also love my high tech toys. I dig my digital camera, my GPS, and my shiny MacBook Pro. My favorite piece of digital wonder is my iPhone. It does more than a Swiss Army knife. It is my phone, my music source, my address book, my date book, my mobile e-mail, my link to the vast store of human knowledge, my guidance system, and my game boy.
What does any of this have to do with kayaking? Well in addition to all of the other things it does, my iPhone is also a global tide table. The app store has several tide apps. I decided on installing TideApp. The interface let's you select tide stations across the globe. The first page sorts the stations by US ports, non-US ports, and favorites. The tide reports seem to be pretty accurate. There are only two potential drawbacks: the times are always in EST and the app appears to access the Internet to get the tide data. For me, neither is a problem. I live on the East coast and the iPhone is usually connected to the Internet.
One other bit of iPhone and kayaking related business. To keep my precious safe while its in the day hatch, I wrap it in an Otter Armor series case. The case is water proof and protects the phone from shock. It adds some bulk to the phone but it is worth it. The phone is mostly usable while wrapped in it's cocoon. The only functionality that does not work in the case is the phone speaker. You can still use the phone with a headset or in speaker phone mode. Sadly, Otter decided not to make a version of this case for the iPhone 3G. It is one of the reasons I'm holding off on upgrading.
The iPhone has one other neat trick up it's sleeve for the kayaking blogger. It makes a good mobile blogging platform. I tried to use the Web version of the Blogger interface and it was passable but not a tool I'd use regularly. Then I found an application called iBlogger. It is made by the same people who make the ecto blogging client for OS X. The app usually cost $4.99 but I managed to get it on sale for $0.99. It works with all of the major blogging services, makes posting and editing old posts easy. The interface is uncluttered and makes working with a blog on the go easy. It does not, however, support posting pictures. The only pain with mobile blogging is the tiny keyboard.