It’s summer here in the UK and that can only mean one thing. It’s raining when it really shouldn’t be raining, the roads are a mess and hedgerows are being cut. A miserable few weeks has led me to get the Elite Cycling ‘Tuo’ home trainer back out after I rather foolishly packed it away for the ‘summer’.
No more than 10 mins to set it up again in the Pedalnorth.com pain cave., and then a quick calibration and I was away again, pedalling the hills – virtually. It connected up to the MyETraining app immediately and with no fuss. It was as though it had missed me too and it simply knew that I needed to ride. Instead of pounding the streets of Zwift land, this time I thought I would conquer some of the My ETraining App’s hundreds of video recorded routes around the globe.
The mantra of ‘Go hard or go home’ took me to the region of Bormio in Italy, which you’ll all know as one classic way up the legendary climb of the Stelvio – one of the worlds best mountain pass roads and treasured by all road users. I really didn’t know what to expect, but boy did I bite off a little more than I could chew.
A road steeped in cycling history and an iconic route was paused in front of me, there on the tv screen. I made sure that the bluetooth was connected. My towel, fan and Voom nutrition products were close to hand, and so I reached down to the laptop keyboard and pressed play.
The Elite Cycling ‘My E Training’ system is beautifully intuitive and links to the Tuo Home Trainer perfectly. Start pedalling and the video simply rolls. Stop pedalling and the video stops. Reach an incline and the Tuo provides a realistic increase in resistance to match some but not all of the incline being experienced in real life. The ‘Tuo’ tops out at 10% but still that’s enough for lung busting and leg burning hard work as you climb. In fact, the climbing in this video is relentless. Gradients from 3% to max 10% all of the way up with no let up. The Tuo keeps adapting to new gradients at an astonishing rate and provides a huge amount of feedback and you make your way through gears.
Glancing at the screen you are not only provided with the video but a vast array of data to help to take your mind away from your screaming body. A great feature is the ability to adjust the display to show differing types of data, and a smaller video frame or the larger video and smaller data fields. Nevertheless, the data is accurately provided and from that you can, in future rides, recognise increases in performance. Elite are currently looking at the video system itself, so it’ll be interesting to see future developments.
Overall, the information from the Tuo was very accurate climbing the famed Stelvio Pass, with only a few minor blips in cadence and speed – but that could easily be my riding and some minor connection issues. However, these do not in any way detract from the overall fantastic experience from the Tuo and the ‘My E Training’ app, which continues to impress us here at Pedalnorth. It took just a little under 2 hours to complete the 11.8 mile journey into cycling heaven and hell. I would love to ride up into the Stelvio Pass for real one day, to compare both experiences – but for now, this is the best that I can do, and very enjoyable it was too. Travel is going to be limited for some time, but the Elite Tuo and it’s accompanying ‘My E Training’ app are a great option that can take me global at the press of a button; either by creating a mapped route or by following a video.
Cycling with these Elite interactive indoor trainers is all about maximizing your experiences outdoors, and it’s certainly achieving that. And, it’s also inspiring me to visit and ride these classic climbs in the future too – and showing me that it’s also a very achievable ride!
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