The LeMond Revolution Stationary Trainer

A review of an innovative off season bike trainer

By Mike Hancock

Let me start off by stating that I loath stationary trainers.  The concept of exerting vast amounts of energy to go nowhere just doesn’t blow my skirt up.  However, I live in a place where snow covers the ground half of the year or more, which makes year-round road riding problematic.  Studded tires and layers of warm clothes mitigate the problem somewhat, but sooner or later I throw in the towel and look for other pastimes.  Usually they involve Twinkies.

Over the past few years I’ve owned all sorts of trainers, from many different manufacturers.  I went through a succession of fluid trainers, and while some were better than others, they all provided the same sensation of riding through mud.  That might pass for realistic to a cyclocross rider, but most roadies are used to something a little smoother.  I moved on to rollers, which provided a great “road feel” and improved my pedal stroke immensely, but I could never stay focused enough to ride them for more than a half hour- especially if I had V02 max intervals planned.  So, I would bounce between the rollers and fluid trainer, though neither was really what I was looking for.

Then Greg LeMond came out with the LeMond Revolution trainer.  I figured a 3-time Tour de France winner might know something about training, and the more I read about it, the more I liked the concept.  You remove your rear wheel and attach your bike directly to the trainer, which eliminates the tire wear and slipping common to standard trainers.  While a standard wind trainer uses a relatively small fan and flywheel, the LeMond’s large fan and large, weighted flywheel were supposed to provide a much smoother power transition.  The Garmin-Transitions pro cycling team had been using them for a while, so I figured they were worth a shot.  I was so anxious to find that silver bullet that would actually make indoor cycling bearable for me that I actually pre-ordered mine before they were released.  You can order the LeMond Revolution through their website (http://www.lemondfitness.com/) as I did, or through fitness equipment dealers that carry the LeMond Fitness exercise bikes. 

When the trainer finally arrived, I noted it was extremely well packaged- much more so than any trainer I have ever owned. Setup was a breeze, and it didn’t take long before I was ready for a test ride.  I did have to adjust my rear derailleur a bit to match the trainer’s cassette, but it took no more than a couple clicks on a barrel adjuster.  Since the LeMond doesn’t require a rear wheel, it sits lower than standard trainers and therefore doesn’t require a climbing block to level the bike.  My fluid trainer and rollers were shoved unceremoniously to the side in preparation as I hopped aboard for the maiden workout.

Two things became immediately apparent as I started my first set of intervals.  First, if you can get past the never-changing scenery and static nature of a stationary trainer, it almost feels like you’re riding on the road.  I even use the similar gear combinations as I would for a given level of effort.  The muddy feeling of the fluid trainer on the upstroke was replaced with a more natural sensation.  The next thing I noticed was that I couldn’t hear the TV.  While the large fan’s pitch is lower than that of a standard wind trainer and not at all annoying, the increased volume of white noise requires a subsequent volume change on the TV or stereo.  It’s certainly louder than my fluid trainer or rollers, which may be a concern for apartment dwellers. As the fan speed increases, the noise level increases, but again the low pitch makes it easy to ignore. Since I ride in the garage, I crank up the Paris-Roubaix videos and rock out to the dulcet tones of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen until my ears bleed.

That’s not to say I don’t have issues with the trainer.  I run a rear speed and cadence sensor for my Garmin Edge 500, and without the rear wheel I have no speed indication.  Since I am doing my workouts based on heart rate/cadence and not speed, this isn’t a huge deal for me.  I idly looked at options for attaching a speed sensor to the flywheel, but eventually I decided to spring for the as-yet unreleased (and fairly pricey) LeMond Power Pilot computer, which provides watts, cadence, distance, speed, heart rate, and calorie measurement with USB and ANT+ download capability.  That brings me to my second gripe, which is the LeMond sensor doesn’t appear to be compatible with my Garmin bike computer.  I would have much preferred it if LeMond had skipped the “power” function, which is likely more of a relative measurement than an actual, calibrated power meter, and instead developed a sensor that would work with a variety of ANT+ computers.  Still, I’ll likely use the function as another data point for my workouts, even if it’s an expression of power in squirrel earlobes (or something like that).  Those small complaints aside, I am definitely a fan (no pun intended) of this trainer.

After a couple of months on the LeMond Revolution, I still loath spinning furiously and going nowhere.  However, I find the workouts much more bearable now.  Within a couple weeks of its arrival, the fluid trainer was up on Craigslist and the rollers were relegated to the rare pedaling technique session.  I honestly can’t imagine going back to a fluid trainer ever again.  The trainer has proven to be very well-designed and sturdy despite some fairly heavy use (insert fat joke here).  I will probably attract all sorts of attention when I break it out for pre-race warm-ups this spring.  It’s a great training tool for those of us who can’t get outside for the real thing as much as we’d like to, and I expect it will provide many years of faithful service.

Now I’m off to the garage for another episode of the Phil and Paul Show…

Mike Hancock has always been late for everything. Although he was an extremely active youth, the biggest thing he did in his 20s was gain 80lbs.
He was 30 before he started skiing seriously, and spent a great deal of money and time becoming a marginal alpine ski racer. He now coaches and
races with the Alyeska Masters, and runs a small NASTAR-esque racing league. Not content to be lousy at only one expensive sport, he actively sought one where excess weight is a serious disadvantage - road cycling. He now races to experience acute embarrassment and learn the value of lung-searing pain. Although he has lost a considerable amount of weight, he still considers himself a fat-fat-fatty. He's not the only one.