REVOLUTIONS
Submitting to the sweet terror of riding rollers
WORDS & LINES
Regroup
The leaves are falling, the nights are drawing in. It's almost indoor riding time. The gist of which is your flavor of trainer, stats, static spinning and screens. But what if you want a different experience, one more in tune with the feel and rhythm of real riding? For those curious enough to cycle beyond established lines, there are rollers.
Dangerous, difficult and at times sweet terror, cycling rollers don’t simulate. Rollers are riding. To experience a session on a set of rollers is to balance at speed, without going anywhere at all. It’s a weird duality. Your mind knows you’re riding. Your eyes tell you something different. If you can’t make peace with those sensations, you will fall off and it will hurt. There’s a reason so many people sell their rollers after a single session. But that’s a mistake.
Cycling on rollers feels like learning to ride all over again. It’s the antithesis of instant gratification. Like a hard ride, rollers require work. But the benefits outweigh the risk. The first time you work up a good spin and feel confident enough to take a hand off the wall (because only crazy people try to roll without solid support close to hand) and settle both palms on the bars, you’ll experience a rush of adrenaline that rivals your greatest ride on the road.
From the side, rollers look like suicide. But the three drums you’re balancing on – two at the back to bookend your rear wheel and one at the front – slope towards the center, gently and constantly reasserting your position as your wheels squirm and move underneath. To a point. If your rollers are not on flat ground, that squirm could see you sliding off, immediately at speed and straight into the TV, or your intrigued toddler, whose excited cries of ‘Daddy Bike!’ will quickly turn to wails as you whip past them and ride headlong into the nearest wall. The rollers also sit you higher up, which feels odd. To mount them and get ready for the off (often, literally) requires a shuffling, brake-holding, wall-gripping awkwardness that I’ve never seen anyone accomplish gracefully.
Assuming you stay upright, the rewards of rollers are yours. Rollers require real balance, but therein lies the draw: you’re actually riding, correcting, feeling your body involuntarily react to minute changes, just like cycling on a surface. There are no screens, no Bluetooth connections, no apps, no controls other than your gears, and it is to those you’ll need to turn to add resistance, pedaling faster or slower, clicking carefully in your early sessions to avoid upsetting your balance.
The sensitivity rollers demand will make you a better rider on the road. If you’re not smooth, you’re toast. Increasing your rpm, changing gear, or moving your hands from the hoods to the drops requires care and an awareness of action and reaction. It’s addictive. And what’s more, because rollers require a quiet mind and singular focus, 30 minutes goes by far quicker than it does on a static trainer. If you master rollers, you won’t need screens or other distractions to stave off boredom.
Tomorrow we might fall off. But rollers are worth the risk. Your TV (and toddler) may disagree.
