This week has seen some really cool and interesting looking developments in the world of indoor cycling.
I’m going to share everything I think looks awesome. There’s quite a lot of things, so let’s get started.
Wahoo KICKR BIKE
First up, the new Wahoo KICKR BIKE looks really smart. It’s essentially the Wahoo KICKR, along with a Wahoo KICKR Climb, combined into a cool indoor bike.
Taking on the Wattbike Atom, I’m guessing the price point is going to be £1500 or more. However, for me, I think this offers a really compelling entry point for someone who would never take their bike outdoors.
Want to see more?
When I was first getting interested in Zwift, a really cool looking indoor bike was the Tacx Neo Bike Smart, which still seems to be ‘coming soon’:
However, Tacx … or Garmin as they now technically are, did also release something cool at this week’s Eurobike show.
Tacx Neo 2T
Yup, somewhat annoyingly (though not unexpectedly), Tacx (or Garmin) have announced the next revision to the Tacx Neo line up, in the form of the Tacx Neo 2T.
The T, I assume, stands for Technically Superior.
The bike deal – for me at least – is that they seem to have improved the lag when kicking into a sprint in Zwift, for example.
It’s frustrating that as a Neo 2 customer, I won’t get this improvement. It’s a hardware fix, rather than a software fix.
That said, if you own a Neo 2, there is a new firmware update now available in the Tacx Utility app. It seemed to do … absolutely nothing new for me. Good stuff.
Zwift Yorkshire Course
Today – Sunday 8th September – marks the realse of the next Zwift map: Yorkshire UCI Worlds circuit.
It’s live right now. I haven’t ridden it, for reasons of trying to complete the Zwift Academy 2019 program. But you should. And I will, as soon as my legs feel up to it.
Zwift Steering
Perhaps most interestingly of all is the announcement that Zwift is introducing a steering / steerable element to proceedings:
This looks like we will need to buy some new hardware – a little rotating front wheel mount (unless you buy a KICKR BIKE for example, which will already have this) – and then we will need to mount our phones to the bars so that the motion can be detected.
For an idea of what this looks like in game, check out the next video:
So this looks like it’s “limited” to a mountain biking course at the moment, but will very likely come into the full game over the course of the next year. That’s just my guess, but it seems reasonable.
That’s just the cool stuff that caught my eye this week. There is likely much more – I’m still very much a novice to cycling, so what attracts me is the big things. The more detailed / nuanced stuff may catch you, so I’d recommend watching all of these videos in full, as there’s tons of cool stuff out there.