Admittedly, my indoor trainer discipline is low, terrible, and I’d normally rather ride in a hailstorm that sit on a butt-numbing trainer. But with the non-stop rain finally getting to me, it’s time to commit to riding inside. I decided a new trainer may help my motivation and ordered a Tacx Cosmos. The Cosmos is a programmable trainer with a unique motorbrake that simulates climbs, downhill coasting, and amazingly a “road feel.” It also produces enough power to break your legs – I learned this by blowing during an especially hard effort (ramp test) to baseline my fitness for the new season.
I’ll post a long term report after another few weeks on the Cosmos. Initially, I’m really impressed and also learned that it’s a complicated trainer requiring lots of time to setup, learn, and program. The software is a world unto itself and without concerted patience is very frustrating. Once you figure out that you’re connected directly to the LCD panel and not in a Windows application, it starts to make more a bit more sense. To help program the Cosmos and the Tacx family of virtual trainers, there’s a growing community of users figuring it out, offering conversion tools, and sharing workouts – here are the results from my ramp test zipped and in .hrm and .wko formats. (note Cyclingpeaks is reving their workout software to read the Tacx format)
Considering that today in Seattle, after more than a month of rain, it snows and then starts raining again, I’ll spend lots of hours on the Cosmos.
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