Monday 24 September 2007

Pic of the day: Retardo the magnetic bike has arrived!

Exercise bike

I bought this one on Friday, but couldn't get it home right away. Today a coworker kindly drove it home to me. Highly appreciated, though his sheep may hold a different opinion on the matter. As a few of you know, I don't have a car, so I occasionally depend on the kindness of others. Well, it is that or a taxi, and they are fiendishly expensive in our country. We are rich, rich, rich! Although I am less rich than most, I still could afford this bike quite easily though. Then again it was on sale, drastically reduced.

On the other hand, this is not the model I thought I bought. It is indeed a Nordic 300, or so it says on the chassis, but it most certainly does not have 16 levels of magnetic resistance. There seems to be 8, and I guess that is good enough for me. There were supposed to be 21 computer programs, but since there is not the slightest documentation on what they do and how they differ from each other, I stick with manual control. Luckily this is quite feasible, it has an "up" and a "down" button that adjust the magnetic resistance.

Before I got that far, however, I had to assemble it. It came in a box, in its separate components, IKEA style. (It is not from IKEA though.) According to my pulse watch, I burned 500 calories putting it together. (Or kcal as they are called here to differentiate from gram-calories). That is quite a bit more than I burned on the 10 minute test drive after it was finished.

Speaking of calories, that is one of the things the built-in computer supposedly counts. I have no idea how it does that. Well, actually I know that it mechanically calculates them from the load and the distance (possibly the speed matters) - I did not at any point give it information about my age, weight etc and it did not continue to count calories after I stopped, even though my pulse remained elevated for a little while afterwards. My Polar pulse watch calculates calories from pulse, weight and age (well, I think age is considered, perhaps sex) and it came up with a much higher number than the bike did. I think it only is supposed to count the extra calories you spend on the biking, and I guess that is what interests people the most.

In addition to calories, it displays the time, the speed, the distance and the pulse. The pulse is measured by two sensors in the handles. This does restrict where you can hold if you want the pulse to be displayed, but it is surprisingly accurate. I checked it against my Polar pulse watch, which uses a belt around my chest near my heart. The difference was just 1-2 beats per minute. That's pretty good; I won't need the pulse watch when using this.

The bike definitely uses some other muscles than walking, and/or uses them differently. I am just going to bike 10 minutes every other day for a while until the muscles have accepted the fact that they will be used this way. They need to grow new capillaries, perhaps add a little muscle mass here and there, strengthen tendons and adjust joints. So I won't be able to heat the living room with it for a long, long time. I am not a young man anymore, and many years have passed since I used to bike. It is not that I have forgotten how, but the muscles haven't been hanging around waiting for that kind of use for all those years. I need to give them a fair chance to adapt.

There are probably A LOT of exercise bikes standing around in garages and basements, belonging to manly men my age who decided to bike for an hour or two the first day. I guess I could have bought one used, but most of them are probably just standing there. You don't really want to advertise it too soon. Well, I hope to be around and tell you a while from now what happened to it. If not, just remind me if I'm still around. I can be ruthlessly honest, even with myself. (Actually I'm not sure Ruth would make any difference, but you know what I mean.)

Oh, and I have named the bike Retardo because it uses magnetic retardation to create the drag when I bike. For some reason it does not have a dynamo to power the computer, as I initially thought. It needs to be plugged in the grid. Then again, it is not like it is going anywhere!