Swifter, Higher, Stronger

Any trip to a website devoted to cycling news will present you with a vast array of cycling related advertisements. Dozens of products are available that will turn you into the next Eddy Merckx. All you have to do is pop the pills to increase oxygen in your blood by gulping down a drink with amino acids. Throw the training video into the DVD player and then jump onto your two-wheeled carbon wonder machine, or this other carbon wonder machine, or this third one. Never mind that all three bikes are all built in the same Korean factory by a 14 yr old master fabricator named, Li Xiao. You will go fasssttttt!!!!... if you buy their product.

Once in a while, however, an advertisement truly stands out. Sometimes it might be a clever saying or a cool photograph or the ever popular hot woman clad in varying quantities of lycra.

Recently, a RacerMate Computrainer ad has caught my eye. And not just for the fact that their model looks suspiciously like local, Cat 4 pro legend turned tri-guy, Dave Garthe.

Now, by all accounts, Computrainer is a fine product. I honestly have never heard anyone say that their Computrainer is heaping pile of dung. I do have to wonder about their latest product, however.

This new training device is the Computrainer Climber. The "Climber" is a clever product that takes the drudgery of riding a trainer and adds the difficulty of riding up a hill/mountain while eliminating the pesky, enjoyable part of going downhill.

Genius!!! The marketing guys are surely grumbling in their cubicles over that decision.

Call me crazy, but on those rare occasions when I felt particularly masochistic and could not ride an actual hill, I didn't drop 2000 smackers Computrainer Climber. I put one or two concrete blocks under my front wheel, cranked up the resitance on trainer and slayed myself for a while. It was a hoot. And, approximately $1990 dollars cheaper.

Back to the issue at hand. The computrainer ad uses a photo of the Dave Garthe lookalike hammering away on his "Climber" while not actually climbing anywhere. What really caught my attention was the angle of the bike. Just look at it.

I was mesmerized by the angle and had to find out more. According to the RacerMate website, the "Climber" can be adjusted from 2.5 degrees to 20 degrees. Wow, twenty degrees. That should get me prepared for climbing the worst section of the Koppenberg, right?

I hate to break the news to the good folks at RacerMate but those cool stage profiles that Paul Sherwen describes during the Tour de France. Those are not drawn to scale. The Col do Galibier is not really THAT steep.

The problem is 20 degrees does not equal 20% grade. With few exceptions, the toughest climbs in France max out at about 12% for short periods. That is approximately 7 degrees. Twenty degrees is approximately 36% grade. Who designed this thing, Tim Taylor of Tool Time?

More power... more degrees... grrr grrr grrr

Maybe those French pussies can only handle 7 degrees of angle but this is America, dammit! Yeah, I will climb the Galibier after the training on the "Climber". Except, I refuse to bother with those annoying switchbacks. Back and forth... back and forth... what a waste of time. I will ride straight up the 'friggin mountain.