 Welcome back to the Friday vlog series where today about a drop of what bomb almost 100 times So my wife is back into cycling Your blood nose I have a blood nose Is that from the what bomb so much so that she's doing it right now I'm not sure if you can hear that background noise, but the house has become a lot noisier since she's got back into cycling We'll talk about that soon, but So everyone knows the story. Let's back the bus up to 2018 where my little family moved from bayside in melbourne victoria to nusa Queensland the triathlon capital of australia and my wife alice who was looking for an Alternative to the gym at the time of moving up here decided she was going to target the nusa triathlon in 2019 which is the biggest Olympic distance triathlon in the world and it has been for almost four decades now Now to be honest at the time when alice told me she was doing the triathlon I thought right out. We'll see if she follows this one through but She proved me wrong finishing in a time of two hours and 37 minutes and 19th place for her age group pretty good But rewinding before that nusa triathlon alice needed a bike So in march 2019 we traveled to a specialized dealer here on the sunshine coast called cycle zone Alice bought her first ever road bike and subsequently got into road cycling and as a result of that the channel kind of went on a new an exciting direction With plenty of husband and wife content which proved to be very popular more popular than the content that just included me That's because you've got a penis you bloody idiot But to be honest it was a very enjoyable experience to be able to share roads biking together with my wife from time to time We had plenty of memorable moments together But in true alice nickles fashion she went too hard Too quickly and overcooked herself with all the disciplines in triathlon from running To swimming and giving up road cycling in late 2020. I think it was in fact I'm trying to pinpoint the moment where alice gave up road cycling and I think this might be it I haven't even run for two weeks. Nothing cardio Where I raced my wife on zwift i'm pretty sure that was the final dagger So it's been approaching almost two years where alice has not been riding at all But something has happened my friends Alice has gotten back into cycling and it hasn't just been one week two weeks three weeks We're approaching almost a month and it has been Unrelenting almost every single day after day after day So what got her back into it before alice shares with you the lure that has got her hooked again Let me show you what we're exactly talking about here So this is it. It's the wahoo kicker roller R-O-L-L-R in true wahoo style. This is how easy it is to put the bike on the trainer Let's do a countdown clock somewhere over there And I actually started twisting that front wheel lock the wrong way This thing here comes in at $12,000 AUD or $800 USD and it was sent to me by wahoo to review So full transparency. I got this kicker roller for free wahoo gave it to me, but they're not paying me in money They're giving me one of these. I guess you could call this semi sponsored or whatever you want to say But to be honest, I didn't even ask for this when I was speaking to wahoo I asked for these things here, which I'll be reviewing on the channel down the track But also in addition to this came This massive box And I was like what the hell is this wasn't asking for this In fact, the box was so big it was intimidating me and for those of you who follow the channel You'll know that I'm really bad with my hands. I don't like doing stuff. IKEA makes me feel sick So literally the box which you can see there compared to a carbon wheel box sat in the corner of my room for literally Two months now because I'm a bit of a dickhead. I didn't look up how easy it is to install So when I finally decided To take this thing out of the box. I was like, oh my god, this thing is so simple to put together Which I'll show you now now you're gonna have to excuse me. I don't like doing unboxings So the box is gone But it comes with this thing which is pretty heavy like just out of the box like that comes with this little philips head Old mate and allen key old mate. That's piece one and two piece three is this that's all it comes with And literally all you have to do Is just tap it in tap tap a roux maybe needs a bit of lube So a little bit of maneuvering you slide it in so I slide this little lever thing in I'm making this look harder than it is trust me. How the hell does this bloke have a channel do the screws back up And then you can adjust this old mate up and back So it fits your bike properly literally that's it bobs your uncle The second thing you have to do is pretty easy as I showed you before now That's not lining up. So just going to give it a bit of a kick from behind probably not the right way to do it There you go Make sure the the wheels are touching the rollers perfectly lock it down there Lock in the wheel down there and bobs your uncle again. It's that bloody easy Now one question that I've got which I still haven't been able to figure out and Alice certainly won't be figuring this one out Now obviously this isn't plugged in but you can actually use it without it being plugged in It's does this thing chew your back tire. I've been told not reading stuff online and no one's really put it in their reviews Luckily, I've got a marathon So for me, I don't really mind but would I want to put a race tire on this thing? probably not but It's just literally as simple as that So before Alice tells you how this machine here has helped to get back into bike riding albeit indoors for the time being Can you give this video a like if you're getting value out of it helps the channel out? Greatly appreciate it and at the end of this video once Alice has spoken. I'm going to share with you why I personally don't find the kicker roller overly practical for my cycling So let's get an alice. You're going to come watch this mate. Alice is getting on the trainer You're going to come watch no you came to the party Oh Yeah, so how are you using you're using the wahoo up it's connected to the roller Yep, and then for some reason it's not connecting to quark. What did you say the other day? Who's quark am I quark? So Now you need a power meter If you want to catch a power meter on your bike because it doesn't come on the trainer So tell us what what do you like about it? I like that it's just set up in the house so I can do it between meetings like I tend to wait until I've banged out Gotten most of my work done for the day or some of it or if I get Like there's too much in my brain and I just get on it for an hour. Yeah Um, do it when the kids are at home. Yep I don't have to take the back wheel off and trade you for your old wahoo kicker. That's true Yeah, and what about you said you like the feel? Yeah, it just feels like riding on the open road. Yeah, you like that So people report that it's noisy. I don't think it's that noisy. No, but how many watts are you doing? Are you doing 350 watts? What if you were like on watt stomper? Do you want to try 300 watts and see what happens? Rossi knows something's going on about a drop of watt bomb Just in case I get to it People do report dc rainmaker report that when you go like big heavy effort, we'll leave you to it. We'll let you watch the show So during this video, I said the kicker roller overly practical for my cycling So in this section, I wanted to quickly explain to you why now initially I set up the wahoo roller for me because wahoo sent it to me and when I was on it I thought oh, I wonder how this thing deals with Urg mode now urg mode is essentially when the trainer takes control of the power Now this isn't going to happen here because it's not even plugged in and it means you don't have to think about it You can just get going now this trainer does do urg mode surprisingly and it does it okay in most instances But it doesn't do it nearly as well as this gen 2 Wahoo kicker that I purchased myself with my own money in 2016 So I've been a fan of wahoo for a very long time particularly for upper-end efforts and I like to use urg mode because You can just sort of set the trainer. I like to go on to wahoo system select the 40 minute Work out and then kind of off you go the trainer does the job You don't need to put much thought to it and I'm in and out of here without really having to think about it And I kind of like that in the mornings particularly before I get my kids ready for school because that Is a mental challenge in itself. So removing mental challenges in the morning is a good thing So this controls the power power is coming from here This Doesn't have power embedded power is coming from here So it could be the crank or the pedal sending a signal back here Which then sends a signal up to your head unit or up to the training up You're using Zwift wahoo system and there's a bit of a delay there Okay, and while it does do a pretty good job. I've identified an issue when doing efforts particularly upper-end efforts The roller overcooks the initial part of the effort I'd actually rather see it the other way around but it overcooks it in this session sometimes from 50 to 80 watts higher than the Intended destination and that can really derail the intended outcome of the session. So that's me I like to do upper-end efforts on the train and I like to use erg mode but for sustained efforts Around threshold or zone 2 using erg mode. Then this actually does a pretty good job I'm actually surprised how well it does considering it doesn't have power embedded It's taking the power from somewhere else But if you don't like training to power or you don't like erg mode, then I think this indoor trainer has some massive benefits Obviously ease of use. I think that's why Alice likes it so much. It's just easy to use but also that on-road feel It's much better on this than on this and if that's what you're looking for particularly I know at the rca we work with people that live in regions where they're mostly indoors Most of the time then having two options is a great thing bit of variability a bit of change Helps with the mental motivation. It's also good for your training to vary Where the resistance coming from here? It's the wheel or the back tire and here it's the drive train So definitely there is a place for this machine depending on what type of indoor riding you like I'll catch you in the next video