Computrainer tips?

[Eden]

Hi Eden! I have a computrainer that I use to test clients and for bike fits, but I rarely train on it myself.

My suggestion is to first really think about the purpose of each workout, and then choose a course that will work for that specific workout. And if you record your rides, you can then use previous rides as your pacer....kinda cool!

And now I'm panicing about the mac thing. I just bought a macbook last night -- should be here today. I have to be able to run my CT on it!!! They said with parallels I could do it. Yikes!

We had the option of running a PC emulator on one of our macs, but we decided since that can be unreliable and we could get a whole PC system so cheap that we would rather go that way. It also means we can leave it set up down in the basement permenantly. The hubby says that a program called Bootcamp is better than Parallels. None of our macs are new enough to be Duo's (the new Intel chip macs), but since you are getting yours new it might be.

Did my first ride on it using the software today. I was scheduled for a fairly long ride (at least long for a trainer) at 1 hr 40. It's still harder than riding on the road - there isn't any resting even when you are going "downhill", but it was still plenty to keep me occupied and entertained and made the whole thing seem to go by faster. I set my pacer up to go a little too fast though and he ditched me :-} Going "downhill" is pretty fun- it really does almost feel like you are going down. My husband laughed out loud the first time it went into a negative gradient and he almost went into the drops automatically. I think I'll enjoy using it even if for no other reason than it is more interesting than a plain trainer.

[velogirl]

The big question is what color is your icon, Eden?

My macbook has the dual core processor. Long story short, but it didn't arrive today. I guess I'll find out tomorrow if it'll work. If not, I have an old pc laptop that I could probably pull out of the closet to use.

[Eden]

There isn't a teal one, so I picked red. My pacer that dropped me was metal man.... I think I'll add some custom road signs just for fun. I saw something either in the manual or on the web site about how to do that and it seemed pretty easy. Eat at Joes or Visit the Beautiful Grand Canyon would be more fun than the endless Saturn signs. I think I'll try to find old bill boards for road side attractions.

I think your new mac will be able run PC software so it should work. Our newest is a couple of years old - its a G5, so we would have to run third party emulation software.