Well, I’ve received my replacement Elite Mag trainer.

It provides much more resistance in higher settings than the old one. On the old one I could be in 5 in top gear on my bike, albeit working hard. On this new one, I’ve had to change down to go to level 5.

Whether the fault causing the old one to melt had something to do with the lower resistance, I’ve no idea.

PS Halfords in Salisbury were great over this. The main Bike Hut chap is very keen to help.

So I went for a Tacx Blue Motion – even on setting 7 and low down the gear range its way tougher than the Elite on full resistance.

That’s reassuring. Thought I was just feeble. Normally 7 even on 44-11 is plenty hard for me at any decent cadence.

Out of interest, what sort of intervals do people do in an hour long workout? I do 10 minute warm up easy spinning, 10 minutes at about 4 or 5 resistance, 5 minutes easy, 5 minutes at the upper resistance, 5 minutes easy, 10 minutes as per the first interval, warm down. Cadence is about 80 for everything except the middle five minutes when it’s a bit more of a grind.

Martin – yep, on a 5 minute interval I’m just about maintaining 90rpm with a 34chainring and mid-way down the block.

I can’t do any session on a turbo without some form of ‘entertainment’ such as Sufferfest and/or Trainerroad – so I couldn’t really comment on specific intervals.

However, I don’t adjust the resistance on the turbo, especially now, since Trainerroad does simulated power if you have a cadence/speed sensor. I just use the gears.