Opinions/help with potential purchase (newbie)

[Hacksaw]

Hi all,
I need some advice and I think the best way to ask is to just go through what brought me to these forums.

I'm in my early 40's and would like to drop 30 lbs. I've always enjoyed riding but between family, work, and golf in my free time, I don't ride much. I do have a Schwinn 240 recumbent exercise bike that I've been riding and I enjoy it to some degree. As opposed to real riding, I can do this after dark and during winter or bad weather.

I got interested in looking for an exercise bike with virtual reality and found out that they are pretty expensive. Between these forums and other resources, it appears that it would actually be cheaper to get a virtual reality trainer and bike, or indoor cycle with virtual riding as opposed to a commercail gym virtual rider. I've also found that doing some of the power training (using the crappy watt reading from the Schwinn) has really helped me add intensity to my workouts.

Anway, after all the research, I find myself thinking that I might like to try road riding which I've never done. I know there's a local group, but I doubt I would currently have much time to go out with them on weekends.

As an aside, I do have an entry level mountain bike and I can do that right out my front door with access to lots of hilly/rocky riding. I like going up hill, but I'm not much into break-neck down hill rocky riding. Access to safe road riding is much more limited, meaning it would take more time as I'd have to drive somewhere to start riding safely.

With all that said, I'm currently considering buying a CycleOps 410 indoor training bike, OR buying a trainer (PowerBeam, RealAxiom, other?) with virtual reality and a road bike. This second setup would allow me the flexibility of taking the road bike out if I ever get the chance. On the other hand, the dedicated setup of the 410 is appealing as it just seems more solid. Also, i can always get a road bike down the road, in which case I'd have a dedicated rider for outside and a dedicated trainer inside. For what's it worth, I'm kind of a numbers junkie, so I could see that if I get into road riding, I'd want a power meter on my road bike eventually.

Sorry for the length of this post. Any advice, comments, or suggestions?
Thanks!

 

[vspa]

well the options you mention are all ok but very expensive, maybe you could first try out spinning bikes in the gym and see how you like it, spinning bikes give you a road bike position and a quite realistic pedal action, quite similar to the real thing. On top of that some gyms have the Flat TV in front of the spinning bikes with cycling videos so then you could also experience a kind of virtual entertainment while riding. The RealAxiom will cost you around 1K dollars, and with that kind of equipment you need a good road bike, but that setup is better than a dedicated machine (the cycleops) because as you have guessed it gives you the flexibility of going out on the road as well, the best of both worlds ! I would finally add that since you have got suitable off road and hill terrain on your door, then keep or upgrade your current mountain bike, its quite ok to have more than one bike, lots of people do.

 

[Hacksaw]

Thanks for your thoughts. To be honest, I guess I never really looked at spinning bikes and didn't really understand the difference. I'll try to take a look at them. At this point, I definitely want to get something I can do at the house...the gym just doesn't work for me right now.

I sure don't intend to get rid of my mountain bike and certainly hope to do some riding this year.

 

[vspa]

a standard indoor trainer cost a fraction of the virtual machine and they are good, you just don't get all the computer stuff and virtual information, it is not an easy workout though, i divide my indoor training in 2 blocks of 30 minutes each, with a 5 to 10 minutes pause in between,