Spinning, and Be True To Your Wheel  

I thought a few shameless snaps of my favorite tennis player would get me a huge traffic spike, but to no avail. So since everyone seems more interested in swim bike run dribble, I decided to jot down a few thoughts about spinning.

Avoid the Boredom

The first thing about spinning is that you have to occupy your mind during the numbing boredom as you sit and pedal. I have a couple of spinerval DVD’s but truth be known, sitting and watching a bunch of other people spinning is only moderately less boring than spinning by yourself. That’s where a good movie comes in. Like Tin Cup

Everyone remembers the “Go for it clip” but my fav is the bank off the Port-A-Potty, I just cannot for the life of me find the clip.

Set the tension

The second thing is that you have to be sure to sync the tension on the roller with the workout. That means that you have to be sure to set the tension so the big gear intervals are getting you to the right intensity. Likewise the low gears have to be set to avoid overworking and allow recovery. During last my Monday session, I had the tension set just right so that the 5 x 45 second ILT was extremely difficult for the last 10 to 15 seconds. My hip flexors are screaming now. I usually try to back off the tension exactly 1/2 turn so I can set it back in the same position next workout. It’s important to back it off to avoid putting the wheel out of true.

Be True to Your Wheel!

Which brings me to probably the most important thing about spinning. That is, your back wheel must be true. If your wheel is out of true on the round, with flats or bulges, your wheel will slip and then bite on every revolution. On top of causing little pieces of your tire to shread off, and jolting your legs on each pedal stroke, it’s plain annoying. The difference in spinning on a true wheel, versus an untrue wheel is like night and day. If it weren’t for the boredom, I’d be incline to say it’s a pleasure to spin on a good wheel.

Spinning on a wheel with no wobble is slightly little less important, but if your wheel has a big wobble, you will have the same effect as rubbing a piece of rubber back and forth across the roller. This will cause excessive heat buildup, and a nasty smell.

My recent experience is that truing one direction will get you pretty close in the other. I am using a crashed wheel that was badly bent. Removing the flats and bumps, greatly reduced the wobble. And when I started tweaking out the wobble, the smoothness of the spin improved. I am already looking forward to my next session. Well sort of.

True Tips

I won’t provide step by step instructions on truing a wheel, there are much better resources available for that.

But I do have a couple of tips.
1. Use a spoke wrench. You can get away with a small spanner or adjustable wrench, but you can get a spoke wrench anywhere for dirt cheap, and it fits in between the spokes and will alow fine tuning.
2. Use baby steps. Half turns at the most. Quarter turns are better. There is nothing more frustrating than over tightening spokes, and causing a wobble in the other direction.
3. Remember which turn increases tension, and which increases. It can be a little counter intuitive because you are turning the nipple, and not the spoke.
4. Keep checking. The tension or compression in the spokes may cause the rim to move over days. So it may be nesseccary to re-true every couple of rides or so.
5. Be patient. The first wheel I ever trued took me weeks. Seriously. I would spen an hour or so, get fed up, then leave it for a couple of days. Then go back. The wheel on my current spin bike was probably done in less than a half hour or so in total.

And don’t worry, I am not riding the crashed wheel on the open road. I have an old beater set up as my spin bike, and the wheel is dedicated to this bike only. If I do fall off, it won’t be at 50kmh