Cycling experts will tell you there’s no substitute for actual time in the saddle in the great outdoors to prepare you for the season ahead.
But if long work hours, short winter days or inclement weather drive you inside, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more suitable stand-in for the asphalt of the open road than the LeMond Fitness Revolution.
The Revolution is manufactured by the company founded by three-time Tour de France champion Greg LeMond. But even if your skill level is more lanterne rouge than maillot jaune, you’ll still get a massive workout. You can spin on it. You can hammer on it. You can grind huge gears and do awesome spin-ups. You can work up a gigantic pool of sweat on the garage floor.
To use the Revolution, you take off your back wheel and clamp your bike down onto it. It’s more complicated to set up than a mag roller, but even I — someone who lacks the mechanical intuition required to assemble a proper burrito — was able to manage it with ease. I did have to go through directions a few times to get the trainer in line with the bike’s rear dropouts, but I still made it from box cutter to the first turn of the pedals in less than 20 minutes.
One note here: our Revolution came with a Shimano 10-speed cassette installed. If you are using multiple bicycles or running something other than SRAM or a Shimano 10-speed, you may have to buy the appropriate cassette body to make it work for you.
There are only two caveats stopping this from being the world champion of trainers. First, it’s heavy and awkward. Moving the Revolution is a two-handed job, making it less than perfect for throwing it in the back of the car and running off to the races. Second, it’s a noisy beast. After a few minutes in the guest room, I felt compelled to dismount and head for the garage. It doesn’t produce a clanging racket or anything, but more of whirring whip-up. Still, the flywheel is noisy enough that I can’t recommend this for apartment dwellers.
Those issues aside — and the garage is the better place to blast my appropriately angry music, anyway — it appears Mr. LeMond has a product here to match his winning ways.