Looking for an Indoor Trainer? (Part 1)

I know I need an indoor trainer so I can ride in the winter. Yes, it will be boring, but it’ll be better than riding the crappy stationary bike in the gym.

As I’m writing this part of the article, I don’t have an indoor trainer, but I plan to have one by the end of the article. (And I will because the article won’t be finished till I have a trainer

This article will be written in parts, starting with deciding to get an indoor trainer, and ending with purchasing an indoor trainer. And so the saga begins…

This post is the first part in a potentially long saga, so be prepared. I’ve been looking at indoor trainers for a while now, and I think I’ll get a road bike this year, so hopefully all of my research will pay off. At first, I was sold on the Cycleops Fluid 2, but that changed whenever I found out about the 1UpUSA trainer.

I think I first heard about it in the Road Bike Rider e-zine.

Then I checked out www.mtbreview.com, and it had an astounding 4.78 (5 possible) rating! And from 67 reviews! The other top brands have only about 40 reviews giving about a 4.26 rating.

I made a big discovery in the next phase of my journey.

It was brought to my attention that 1UpUSA is a relatively unknown company compared to Cycleops or the Kurt Kinetic trainers, yet they had so many more reviews on mtbreview.com. Suspicious? Maybe.

I checked out the reviews and it seems that they are all unique. One possible explanation is that 1UpUSA gives a card that says “Please rate our product on mtbreview.com” to each customer. If they do that, that’s a great idea. If they don’t, maybe they should look into it.

So I decided to e-mail the company. I asked them about the situation to get their take on it. (I e-mailed them Thursday night, and got a reply Friday morning!) They reasoned that when an average person uses a great product, they naturally want to talk about it. Sounds good to me.

Now I know that at least their customer service is amazing! (The lifetime guarantee doesn’t hurt, either) I’m definitely looking into the trainer for this fall.

To be continued…