About Rob

Bike trail and long distance cyclist and publisher of about-bicycles.com

No Shortage of Memorial Day Sales

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Rob

For those of us who aren’t heading out of town for the holiday weekend, or even for those who are and have their mobile devices handy to stay connected, there are plenty of Memorial Day Weekend Cycling Sales going on.

I had originally planned to write a blog post about my trip to Johnson Health Tech last week (which I will followup on next week). Then I started checking up on the prices for the outdoor and fitness bikes on this site (which I check on manually and regularly) and I discovered some really good sales going on and wanted to pass that information on to you, in this blog post, while there is still some time left to take advantage of the sales.

I had known about the REI sale since I am a “card carrying” member of REI and had been receiving emails on it. When I finally looked into the details I discovered that they are offering 30% off on many items, including cycling clothing and 15% off on most of their bikes. They also have a deal where REI members can also get 20% off any other item that is not on already sale. The details can get a little confusing but basically you can get a big discounts on the things that you get from REI right now and when REI has their sales that is usually the best time to get stuff there.

Then I discovered that Performance Bike also has a Memorial Day Sale going on and giving up to 50% off on many of their bikes and up to 70% off on cycling gear.

I’ve included a little more info on the Outdoor Bike Sales on our May – Cycling Deals and Discounts page.

As for the sales on Fitness Bikes, Horizon is giving customers a Free Fitness Mat and Free 1-Year extended Warranty, Lifecore Fitness is offering $75 off of all their exercise bikes and NordicTrack and Livestrong are also dropping their prices and/or offering add-ons when you get fitness bikes from their websites.

I’ve included a little more info on the Fitness Bike Sales on our May – Fitness Bikes Deals and Discounts page.

That’s really it for my update today except that I wanted to mention that I like to include at least 1 photo with my blog posts so I selected the photo above, from the Tour of Elk Grove race, since I thought it just captured the feel of getting out there (with new gear) and riding.

OK, the Memorial Day Weekend is here and, like they used to say on SNL, I am outta here!

Flooding on West Side of Paul Douglas Trail

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Rob

I was just out to the bike path that goes around Paul Douglas Forest Preserve (in Hoffman Estates (on Monday 4/29)) and discovered that the trail is flooded once again on the west side of the trail (the part that runs parallel to Huntington/Freeman Road).

The flooding on the west side of the Paul Douglas Bike Trail.

This part of the trail has flooded quite a few times and I have even written about it before here. It makes sense that this part of the trail would be flooded with all the other flooding that we have had in the area this year.

It actually used to flood a little worse in the past than this time (although it may have been worse before I made it out to the trail this time). They actually dug up this part of the trail shortly after it was built, added a few large drainage pipes under the trail and re paved it again to help with the flooding but it was not completely successful (although it did help a little bit).

The photo that I have included here is from my iPhone and shows how the trail looks as you are looking down the trail from south of the flooded part (looking north). There were even a few geese swimming around on the trail when I was there! You can see one of them in the photo in the distance on the right.

You can get around this part of the trail fairly easily by crossing over the Huntington/Freeman Road which it is right next to the trail at this point and it is just a very short detour. As I was taking the photo here I saw one rider go down to the flood and it looked like he was going to ride through it but he chickened out and ended up going around.

You can see the yellow line (from the trail) through the water and I believe that it is only about 4 inches deep so if you are adventurous (and don’t mind getting your feet wet) you can ride through it too. I have done this in the past (although I was on foot in this case).

That’s it for now… I’ll have more trail updates when I am able to ride more.

Deer Grove Orange Trail Conditions, about-bicycles updates…

Posted on April 20, 2013 by Rob

I was just out on the Orange Trail in Deer Grove yesterday and wanted to post an update on the condition of the trail since there were some downed trees. The Orange Trail is the old abandoned forest preserve road that they closed to automotive traffic. I actually remember many years ago when you could drive on what they now call a trail but that was quite a while ago. You get on this trail from the entrance off Dundee Road just east of Northwest Highway.

The first tree over the Orange Trail

The Orange Trail is not very long (a little over a mile one way) but it is one of my favorite trails in Deer Grove and can be used to get from one trail (or road) to another. I walked the trail yesterday since I have been unable to ride so far this season due to an injury (my physical terrorist 🙂 has now given me permission to start riding short distances again so I should be back in the saddle again for this season soon).

Anyway, what I discovered yesterday is that there are 2 huge trees that have fallen on to the trail and I don’t believe that you can ride around them on a bike without stopping and either walking around or under them. The trail was also under water on one side in one of the ravines but you could still get by easily on the other side. The trees that were on the trail look like they fell over due to all the rain and flooding and the wet ground since you could see how their roots came out of the ground.

The high water over some of the trail

They maintain the trails in Deer Grove pretty well (it’s a Cook County forest preserve) so I imagine that they will get out there and get these trees off the trail eventually but I don’t know how long it’s going to take them to get to it. So you just need to know that if you ride on this trail there are some obstructions that you’ll need to get around.

We have had a lot of flooding in the Chicago area this week so I was worried about flooding on the trails. This trail in Deer Grove was not bad but I know there has been flooding along the Fox River and the Des Plaines River so I’m sure parts of those bike trails are flooded too.

More fallen trees on Orange Trail in Deer Grove

The second fallen tree on the Orange Trail

The river does not have to be that high to flood the underpasses on the Des Plaines River Trail. I’ve seen that happen before as in the photos on this page.

About-Bicycles Updates

Sorry about the long time between posts here, I am usually much more active with this blog. Although we have not had the greatest riding weather recently, we have had a few good riding days but as I mentioned above I have had an injury that has prevented me from riding so far this season.

The main reason though that I have not been on schedule with my blog updates and have fallen a little behind on a few other updates to the site is because I am still trying to recover from the last Google Bashings that this site has had.

I have mentioned this before in some of my other posts but if you missed it we lost a large amount of traffic to this site with the recent Panda and Penguin updates from Google. We still rank higher in the Search Engine Results for Bing and in a lot of cases I have found the Bing results to be more relevant.

It seems to me that Google is ranking the popular super-sites on the internet higher on most search terms regardless of how relevant the specific results are. For example, you always see Wikipedia, You Tube, Amazon, TrailLink (for bike trails), Flickr (for photos), etc. even when they don’t match the specific term that you are searching for. Plus often you get multiple (like 10 or more) search results for the same website (let’s have some variety!).

OK, I could ramble on a lot more about Google’s degraded search results but I need to get back to the topic that I was originally discussing.

One of the penalties that you get with the Google Panda update has to do with “Thin Content” and I think there is a possibility that my bike trail photo pages may have inadvertently caused me problems in this area.

The bike trail photo pages on this site were designed simply to showcase the bike trail photos with very brief captions on most of the photos. Well, I discovered that we have about 250 photo pages on this site and most have very little content because they were designed that way.

No one really knows what the exact Google algorithm is for their search results (except for the people at Google) but I have read that pages with less than 300 words as content could get penalized by Google and if there are a large number of these on your site it could cause problems. Well I have a very large number of photo pages with very little content other than very brief captions.

So anyway, one of the main things that I have been working on is increasing the content on these pages so I am backtracking and adding much more commentary to all the bike trail photo pages and this has been slow and time consuming.

In some cases the additional content just looks like “fluff” but I have discovered that adding more verbiage does actually add more depth the the photos and articles and can be helpful too in many situations.

Well, I knew that this topic was going to be hard to explain and I’m afraid that this part of the post got longer than I intended.

For those of you who made it this far and were interested, I hope that this explains why there hasn’t been many blog posts recently and that I am still working hard to recover from the latest Google bashings so I can continue with more relevant and quality updates to this website.

Intense Color Bike Trail and Nature Photos

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Rob

I’ve been taking bike trail photos ~ and writing the corresponding bike trail articles ~ for this website ~ for about 10 years now. My original photos were actually pretty lame (in retrospect) but since this is something that I really love to do, I kept working at it, upgraded my photo equipment and improved a lot over time (I think anyway).

I have also had photo contributions to this site from other cyclists and photographers, most notably Dale Kiffel who has contributed some very high quality bike trail and nature photos to this website ~ like the (color enhanced) spider web photo ~ from the Des Plaines River Trail ~ on the left.

Like most other photographers these days, I have also used Photoshop and other photo editing programs to enhance the original photos. In the past I had mostly used the photo editing programs for some minor cropping or other very limited changes.

These days I have noticed that quite a few photographers, at various levels, use photo editing programs pretty extensively and many of the most dramatic photos that I see out on the internet look like they have had the colors enhanced. In some cases it’s just a touch other times it is quite extensive.

Of course, it is best to get everything right in the camera prior to taking the photo and not have to depend on photo editing programs but even when you do get a really good photo you can sometimes make it even better in the lab (as I call it).

Last summer I got my first DSLR camera and have been working on getting much higher quality photos for this website. I believe that I have improved quite a bit and I have found that, in some cases, enhancing the colors on the bike trail and nature photos can improve the photos quite a bit although you still need to start with good photos to begin with.

In the past, I have usually used the color enhancements very conservatively (and I usually mention this with the photo article) just to make the photos stand out a little more and to be a little more interesting.

Recently, I have seen some HDR (High Dynamic Range) photos in addition to some just heavily edited photos out on the Internet that were very striking. So I decided to try this with some of the bike trail and nature photos that I have in my collection and/or have posted out on this website.

So you can find our collection of Intense Color Trails and Nature Photos here.

Most of these photos have been posted previously on this website under the corresponding Bike Trail Pages. The selection that I used includes some of the best and most colorful photos posted in 2011 and 2012.

I’ve used varying degrees of color saturation for this collection of photos. In some cases the saturation is not that high in other cases the enhanced photo looks almost cartoon like (like the second photo on the first photo page).

As I was working on the color enhanced photos it reminded me of that old SNL skit where Christopher Walken kept trying to get MORE COWBELL on the Blue Oyster Cult song. I kept wanting MORE COLOR! (I hope I got better results than they did with the Cowbell on the BOC song though 🙂 ).

So now that I have these Extreme Color photos posted, I’ll check and see how you all like them by the internet traffic to these pages and the “Likes”, “Tweets”, etc. that we get. If I see that these photo pages are popular then I’ll probably some color enhanced collections for the future trail pages that I post.

Note: I have social media buttons at the bottom of each page on this website so if you like these photos please add a “Like” or a “Tweet” etc. at the bottom of the Intense Color Photo Pages.

Thanks, Rob.

Road Bike Rider in the Snow and Photo Stuff

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Rob

I just wanted to mention an unusual kind of thing that I saw this weekend when I was out on the bike trail behind my house working on a Photoshop project that I wanted to try for my personal FB profile picture (also an unusual kind of thing).

I was out on the bike trail with my camera, a mirror and a tri-pod in order to get this in-camera-lens photo that I tried one other time on a birthday card. Fortunately there was no one else out there because of all of the snow on the trail since I think my situation would have looked pretty quirky to anyone else that might have been there.

Well, I shouldn’t say no one else was out there because after I finished my photo project and as I was packing up my stuff this cyclist on a road bike rode by! There was a good few inches of snow on the trail and this guy was on a road bike with very skinny tires (and was managing to stay vertical).

As this cyclist was riding by I said “wow, in the snow?”. All he said was “this wasn’t planned“. I have no idea what that meant or how he could have been on his bike on a bike trail and it not being planned but that’s what he said.

As he was riding off into the distance I realized that I had my camera right there and that this is something I should have a photo of. So I got a photo of this rider as he was going up a fairly steep hill on this trail.

The photo that I have included above uses the “in-camera-lens” effect that I was working on out on the trail and the photo of the bike rider (within the camera lens). I’ve included the larger blowup of this photo so you can see it better if you click on the photo.

Well, I completed the Photochopping for my FB profile picture, uploaded that and I got quite a few comments and likes on the photo effect (even though it had a picture of me in it too 🙂 ).

I don’t want to overuse this effect but I think that I am going to update the About-Bicycles Facebook page to use something like this too soon.

BTW: if you do a LIKE on our FB page (the link above) then you will also get notifications when there are updates to this blog since I have it set to update the FB page whenever I do a blog post here. Or you could even read the blog posts out on FB if you prefer.

If you would like to know how this is done in Photoshop (it’s not difficult) just post a reply here or send me an email and I’ll give you the details.

A Step Back for Google

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Rob

This post is an update on the status and format of this website rather than my more usual posts on biking, bike trails and fitness.

Back in August of last year (2012) I spent about a month converting this website to a more mobile friendly format and posted that I completed the conversion on September 10th. The new mobile-ready format has been working fine especially on small mobile devices like cell phones since the display changes to 1 column.

Well, I have had some major issues with my website rankings with Google’s SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) starting about 3 weeks after my mobile updates to this site.

I actually highly suspect that the problem with the Google SERPs really has more to do with recent Google updates (Panda and Penguin) but I need to rule out that the changes to the mobile format did not have something to do with this problem.

Therefore, I must take a step back and convert the pages back to their original (less mobile friendly) format. I plan to do this update on Saturday Feb 9th. The pages can still be displayed on cell phones but you will need to zoom in to read them properly. This blog will remain in the more mobile friendly format.

I’ll need to give this at least a month to know if the formatting played a role in the search results problem. If I determine that the mobile format did not have anything to do with the issue then I can convert the site back fairly easily now.

Regarding the Google Panda and Penguin updates I am more convinced than ever that Google is now favoring big business and the largest and most popular Internet websites over any small business or individual website now.

Just check out the results that you get from Google now. Often I will get 5 or 10 listings of Amazon results (when searching for a product for example) or large numbers of sequential YouTube and Wikipedia pages for other searches and I need to go to page 2 or 3 for something unique or a less biased page.

OK, well I may have more on that later but I thought that I would at least touch on it here since it relates to the update that I have planned for tomorrow. Sorry for any inconvenience that you may have with this (especially on cell phones).

Exercise Bike Tips for Longer Rides

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Rob

This is just a quick update on some of the things that I have recently found to be helpful for staying motivated to do longer rides indoors ~ on an Exercise Bike, Spin Bike or Bike Trainer.

I have written quite a bit below, in previous blog posts, on the benefit of various entertainment and monitoring options to help you stay motivated through out your indoor cycling workouts and these things are still very helpful. Specifically, listening to music, watching TV, reading (in some cases) or just monitoring your workout stats and maybe even competing with yourself (or with others if you have the more advanced console options to interact with the internet. See the Proform or NordicTrack bike reviews for more on this with the iFit technology).

Anything that can keep you entertained or distracted to some degree will probably help pass the time quicker (and allow you to do longer, less boring rides). I have also discovered a couple of very simple things to do for distraction and to allow me to pace myself more for longer rides.

One of the things that I have been using more lately is to simply coast a little. I used to consider this to totally be cheating since the goal is to get a workout and keep your heart-rate up. I found that when I never took a break I was getting worn out much quicker and just ended up not riding for as long.

So lately I’ve been taking a few short breaks during my workout (for some water, to change the tv channel or to check things on my iPhone, etc.). I am talking about very short breaks (like less than a minute) which is very natural and more like riding outdoors. My heart-rate does not usually even drop that much with a short break.

When you ride your outdoor bike there are always times when you get a break from pedalling and you get some free miles from coasting. On an indoor bike you don’t get this extra coasting time so it is really natural to take some short breaks occasionally and like I said, this actually helps me to ride much longer and farther in the long run.

And finally, this is just more of a mental thing, I like to think about my outdoor rides, when I am riding indoors and imagine myself at the mile markers that I remember from these rides.

For example, one of my usual rides outdoors is a 17 mile ride through Inverness and on the Paul Douglas Bike Trail. Since I have an odometer hooked to my bike (on the trainer) when I see that I have hit mile one, I imagine where I would be on my outdoor ride on mile one (and so on for the rest of the ride). If I know how long I intend to ride then I have to imagine my turn-around point and I can’t stop until I make it all the way back (right?). OK, I said it was a mental thing.

I know that these are just small things but I think that anything that helps to pass the time quicker, to entertain you and allow you to do longer or harder workouts is a good thing.

Now I’m imagining that “most interesting man in the world” beer commercial guy and instead of him saying “Stay Thirsty My Friend” he is working out indoors and saying “Stay Motivated My Friend“! 🙂

Bike Trainer vs. Exercise Bikes at Fitness Club

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Rob

I’ve been riding my bike indoors on my Bike Trainer (indoor bike stand) quite a bit this year and experimenting with different entertainment options to make it more interesting and make the time go faster.

I have found various things that work for me that help keep me entertained and motivated and I am always crazy about keeping track of all my workout stats so I have also hooked up and used a couple of different devices either on my bike or in my workout room.

For example I have a small stereo in my workout room and I hookup my iPhone to it for music. The cable reaches my handlebars so I hook my iPhone up to my handlebars so it is handy. I have also hooked up a laptop in the room to watch videos things on the internet (unfortunately I do not have a cable-box for that room so I don’t have a tv in there).

I also use my wireless heart-rate chest strap and Bike GPS computer (Edge 800) to monitor my heart-rate (OK, it’s only a Bike Trainer but I have it setup with almost as many options as most exercise bikes!).

Well, this still wasn’t quite enough stats for me so I also hooked up my old bike computer, which is a wireless wheel-magnet type of bike computer, to my bike and moved the wheel magnet to the back wheel so I could monitor my MPH, Distance, Average and Time.

So far I have found that I like different options depending on my mood and how much time I plan to workout. For shorter workouts I just keep it simple and listen to music. If I want to do some extra time then I’ll use the laptop and watch something (like on Netflix or YouTube).

Anyone who has surfed the Exercise Bike and Trainer pages on this website knows that I have done a ton of research on exercise bikes and spin bikes over the years too. Although I have met with experts in the fitness field and have reviewed and ridden countless exercise bikes and spin bikes I am always looking for new information and a different perspective.

In the past I have ridden commercial quality exercise bikes at a fitness center and then gone directly to a retail store (the same day) and ridden the residential models in order to get a better comparison of as many models (in the different categories) as I could.

You can get some commercial grade (or at least light commercial grade) exercise bikes at retail stores and on the internet but it can be hard to see a really good selection of commercial and residential exercise bikes all in one place.

I was fortunate to be able to review and compare commercial and residential model exercise bikes at Johnson Fitness in Cottage Grove, Wisconsin on my last trip there but that is not usually an option for most people that are just looking for a good quality exercise bike.

Anyway, getting back to my quest for more information and a different perspective on indoor fitness bikes (and to the subject of this post), I decided to visit one of our local fitness clubs, XSport Fitness, to compare their commercial grade exercise bikes with my new home-made bike trainer setup (which I just used the day before).

They have a ton of Exercise Bikes (Uprights and Recumbents) at XSport but really only 2 brands, Life Fitness and Star Trac. Most of the bikes were in good working order although I noticed that one of the Life Fitness bikes had a clanking sound as I rode (so I switched to another bike).

All of the cardio equipment at XSport (Exercise Bikes, Elliptical Trainers, Treadmills, etc.) had small TV screens that were controlled a device called Cardio-Theater and had small controllers next to the monitors where you could plug in headphones and control the volume and channels.

I ended up riding some miles on a Star Trac Upright then I switched for some more time on the Life Fitness Recumbent.

So here are my thought after riding my Bike Trainer one day and the Exercise Bikes at the Fitness Center the next day. I usually prefer keeping my rides and workouts simple and don’t really like driving to a Fitness Club (XSport is about 15 minute ride for me) so that is a big plus for the Bike Trainer workout (or in-home equipment in general).

I also like that I don’t have to re-adjust everything on my Bike Trainer and I can keep track of my stats consistently (it’s always on the same equipment).

I wore my wireless chest strap and brought my bike computer with me to XSport so I was able to compare the HR stats from the Exercise Bikes to my wireless chest strap monitor. In this case, the HR monitors on the commercial bikes at XSport were very close to the wireless monitor and very accurate (a plus for the fitness center).

One of the nicer things about the Exercise Bikes at the fitness center was the Cardio-Theater TV screens that they had on all the equipment. I didn’t spend a long amount of time on each machine so I didn’t get totally involved in any of the shows that were playing but I did watch for a while and it was convenient and time passed much quicker while I was watching a show.

The other, most obvious, positive thing that you get with the Fitness Center, in general (not just the exercise bikes) is the huge selection of equipment that they had there. I also spent a little time on an Elliptical Trainer and on a Treadmill. That was plenty for me but they had plenty more if one has the energy for it.

One of the advantages that Exercise Bikes have over Bike Trainers is the built-in consoles with all the stats and workout programs. As I mentioned above, I have hooked up (and rigged up) some equipment to my bike trainer to monitor my workout stats but the built-in consoles are just easier and track more information.

Many of the Exercise Bikes on our Best Exercise Bikes page have consoles that allow you to upload and download your workout stats and additional workout programs to your computer or to and from the Internet.

Of course, if you want the convenience of an in-home workout and want to keep the costs down you may just want to check into a Bike Trainer instead.

You know that saying “If you’re going to talk the talk then you need to walk the walk” (or something like that). Well, I think I’ve earned a little more of the right to talk the talk after walking so much of the walk ~ or more accurately, riding the ride. Actually, I get a little wore out in the process sometimes! 🙂

New Bike Trainer Setup and Entertainment Options

Posted on January 17, 2013 by Rob

I just setup my bike on a new (borrowed) Bike Trainer, now that I have a place for it, and in order to check out the trainer and some entertainment (boredom-breaking) options that I had in mind.

The bike trainer that I am using now is a Giant Cyclotron Auto mag resistance trainer which it is very basic and easy to setup and use. My daughter just went back to college for another semester so I have hew room to use (for my trainer room) for most of the winter.

I took some photos of the bike trainer with my bike (Trek 1500) attached to it for this blog post (I’ve setup the photos on this blog post to show the larger versions when you click on them) and I was thinking of putting together a video to show the full bike trainer setup and use but I have not gotten to that just yet.

Bike Trainer Setup:

The first step in setting up the bike trainer is to replace the real axle or skewer from my bike’s back wheel with the skewer that is setup to clamp into the Bike Trainer. This was much easier than I expected. You don’t even need to take the rear wheel all the way off to change the skewer. You just release the wheel with the quick release mechanism (that most newer bikes have), lift it out of the frame and unscrew the fitting on one end. Then you replace it with the Bike Trainer skewer and reattach the rear wheel.

Once this is done, and you have adjusted the Bike Trainer to fit your bike and wheel, it is really easy just to clamp the bike into the trainer. This would be great in the summer when you want to use your bike outdoors and indoors.

Adjustments and Indoor Workout:

This particular bike trainer has a resistance adjustment knob in the back. This is easy to use and you can set a wide variety of resistance levels from really easy to incredibly hard. I can see how it would be nice to have a Bike Trainer with a remote resistance control although since you can also change gears on your bike as you ride that is not totally necessary.

I found that I may even get a better workout on the bike trainer than I do riding outdoors. When riding outdoors there are quite a few times on any ride that you are able to coast while riding and essentially take a break (without even stopping). On the trainer I feel guilty if I stop so I tend to ride the entire time that I am on it. Also, since this is a mag trainer (not fluid) the resistance level is not “progressive” so when you stop pedalling the rear wheel stops pretty quickly then when you start again it is almost like starting from a complete stop again.

Entertainment and Boredom-Breaking Options:

OK, I saved the most fun stuff for last. Whether it is a Bike Trainer, an Exercise Bike or an Indoor Cycle/Spin Bike an indoor workout is usually just not as much fun as riding outdoors. Fortunately, there are plenty of entertainment and inspirational options available these days.

In my case, I started my workout playing music through my iPhone. Playing music as you workout is entertaining and can also be motavational. I started with my ear-buds but I found it a little difficult to find a place for my iPhone since I was wearing a t-shirt (without a pocket) and besides I prefer speakers if I have a choice.

So my next step was to setup my sons old stereo that was not being used, and had an Aux jack (for my iPhone). My son basically did this pretty quickly. So now I have a small stereo in our new workout room! (I mean my daughters room 🙂 ).

One of the nicer features that most of the mid-range or better Exercise Bikes have these days is iPod/MP3 jacks and sound systems that are built into the console. It is nice to have the built-in sound system but as you can see by what I just described, it is not totally necessary since there are other options too.

Although we do have a tv in ~~my new exercise room~~ my daughter’s room, we moved the cable box to another room for a while so I don’t have a tv signal in that room. Still, that is not a problem these days since I have my laptop and can play videos (YouTube or others) and/or Netflix.

In my case, for this initial workout, I setup my laptop and played some of the bike trail videos that I have on this website and that I always thought would be fun to watch while riding indoors. You can find the Bike Trail Videos on this site here.

Our bike trail videos are bike trails mostly in the Chicagoland area. Unfortunately, I used an older camcorder and the quality is not up to today’s standards and I’m not sure if you can play them full screen on all computers and mobile devices.

The thing that I liked about the bike trail videos on this site ~ aside from knowing that I had quite a few and where to find them ~ is that they are fairly long (mostly around 15 minutes) and they are bike trails in this area that I have ridden and am familiar with.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun to (virtually) ride the Busse Woods Trail and the Chicago Lakefront Trail as I worked out yesterday! Then I rode the Des Plaines River Trail this morning as I was taking the bike trainer photos.

Well, my homemade virtual-ride setup may not be as advanced as other options that are available these days ~ like the Proform Tour de France (TDF) Bike ~ but it was still a lot of fun.

After a short time I realized that I really needed a fan to stay cool during my workout so I setup a big box fan in front of my bike. This is one thing that you get natuarally on your outdoor bikes but for me a fan was essential for an indoor workout. Besides, then it felt even more like I was outdoors on a real trail! Once again, many Exercise Bikes come with fans built into their consoles but this is not totally necessary either (besides I don’t think that the built-in Exercise BIke fans ever cool you down that much).

One thing that I totally forgot to check out yesterday was my heart-rate monitor. My HR monitor is integrated into my Garmin 800 Bike GPS computer so since I was not going to be covering any real territory, I didn’t think of it at the time but I see no reason why I can not just strap on my HR chest strap and monitor my HR through my GPS as I ride indoors.

Summary:

Well, I guess this post got a little long but to sum up my thoughts I found this simple Bike Trainer to be easy to use, a great workout and really a lot of fun. Bike Trainers (in general) are a really nice economical way to get a good workout indoors (and without going to the gym or fitness center).

See our Bike Trainers page for more information on the different kinds of trainers, their benefits and for some good online resources.

One of the advantages that indoor (magnetic resistance) Exercise Bikes have over Bike Trainers, Indoor Cycles (or Spin Bikes) is the built-in consoles that allow you to track (and upload in some cases) all of your ride stats such as Speed, Calories Burned, Watts, Distance, Time, etc. See our Best Buy Exercise Bikes page for plenty of exercise bike information and reviews.

I was able to use the stopwatch feature on my iPhone to track my workout time on the bike trainer but I really had no indication about my speed, distance ot the other stats.

Actually my wife asked me how far I rode and, wthout really thinking about it much, I just said “Zero Miles“. Actually I did not ride a single mile, yard, foot or inch! My average speed was also zero. I did not move! It’s a “stationary bike”! 🙂

I thought that this was kind of funny in a way. It actually is nice to have a mileage number and a speed number even though they are actually only calculations or estimates as to what you might have ridden on a “real ride”. These stats are nice for comparison purposes (and I’ll try not to think of is so literally)!

Recumbent Elliptical Reviews and Dual Action Exercise Bikes

Posted on January 11, 2013 by Rob

One thing leads to another and after adding over 100 fitness bike reviews to this website I have just completed our fourth Recumbent Elliptical (aka: Seated Elliptical) Review.

For those of you who are familiar with the history of this website, we started out being all About Bicycles (of course) with an emphasis on bikes, bike accessories and bike trails in the Chicagoland area (and in Wisconsin).

Well, cycling is all about fitness too so we moved into fitness bikes (Indoor Cycles and Upright and Recumbent Exercise Bikes) and I have been fortunate to have a close friend who is an expert in fitness equipment (formerly a VP at a major fitness company) and I have also met and consulted with other exercise bike product specialists in the industry over the years. I focus more on fitness bikes in the winter and I love supporting fitness and good health in general.

For those of you who ride a lot outdoors, you may have noticed that Recumbent Bikes are getting more popular. There are quite a few different kinds of recumbent bikes (and trykes) available these days although they share some common features. They are very comfortable to ride, are easy on the knees and provide great back support. A friend of mine has owned 2 recumbents (a SWB (short wheel base) and LWB (long wheel base)) and I have ridden many miles on these bikes and can confirm how comfortable these bikes are.

OK, getting back on track with the subject of this blog post, in the process of reviewing numerous Recumbent Exercise Bikes, I ran across some Dual-Action models (with either levers or pedals for your arms and upper body) and eventually started looking into Recumbent (or Seated) Elliptical Bikes (or trainers). Sorry if gets a little confusing with the various names but even though these machines have been around for years, I still see them referred to using the different names that I’ve used here.

I have also received emails from visitors to this site who were looking for Dual Action Exercise Bikes or Recumbent Bikes (or ellipticals) or both so I needed to become more familiar with these kinds of fitness products.

What I have found is that there are quite a few different configurations and kinds of Exercise Bikes and Elliptical Trainers that are Dual-Action and/or Recumbent and they are designed and used for different purposes.

Some people prefer a dual action fitness bike to stay in shape for riding season and to get an upper body work out too. I have found that many of the people looking for this kind of fitness product have special needs and use them for Rehab, Physical Therapy, Weight Loss or just a good low impact aerobic exercise.

The first Dual Action Exercise Bikes that I looked into (many years ago) were Dual Action Fan Bikes. The most popular are the Schwnn models like the original Schwinn Airdyne and the newer (less expensive) Schwinn Airdyne AD2. Fan Bikes use a pedaling motion (like a regular bike) and have levers for your upper body workout.

I could not find any other dual-action bikes that used a regular pedal and crank (like an outdoor bike) and that also had an upper-body exercise mechanism although there are quite a few models that use an elliptical design for your lower body workout and also have either levers or pedals for your arms and upper body.

I have seen quite a few Octane Recumbent Ellipticals at some of the boutique fitness stores around here but did not find as good of a selection online. I also reviewed the Inspire CS2 Recumbent Elliptical but that model is no longer available online.

The Smooth V2300 is a very popular Recumbent/Seated Elliptical Bike, which I still have listed as active on our site although they are currently out of stock (I have talked to my representative at Smooth and have been told that they should be available again in mid-February). The Smooth V2300 uses elliptical pedals for your lower body workout and a pedaling device for your upper body exercise.

Some of the models that you can get online now are the Proform Hybrid Trainer, which is a dual-action elliptical that can also be used as a seated or recumbent elliptical. The arm levers for your upper body exercise are only accessible, however in the standing elliptical position.

And finally, I get to the Recumbent Elliptical that I have just reviewed and that is available online now which is the HCI PhysioStep RXT Recumbent Elliptical (I saved the best for last).

This product is truly a Dual-Action Recumbent Elliptical Trainer with a Recumbent/Seated Elliptical Trainer, for your lower body, and adjustable Arm Levers for your upper body exercise.

One of the things that really impressed me about this fitness product is the overwhelmingly positive and consistent customer reviews on this product.

See our HCI PhysioStep RXT Recumbent Elliptical Review for more detail on this product, the customer reviews, our review and the best place to get this Recumbent Elliptical online.

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