Gadzooki

A Virtual Training Bike That’s a Lot of Fun

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We all need to exercise to keep ourselves healthy. Some people do this by going to the gym regularly. But there are some who, although they want to exercise, they just don’t like going to the gym. The reasons are varied – it takes extra effort to haul your ass to the gym, a hectic schedule or both. If you’re one of these people then the only other option is to exercise inside your home. If you want to make your home equipped for exercise you can consider getting a stationary bike.

Stationary bikes are great exercise equipment. It is easy to use, you can really burn a lot of calories and it’s a lot of fun to use. If you’re on the lookout for a stationary bike go and look for the ProForm Tour de France. This is a virtual training bike designed for those who are planning to join a bicycle race. In fact, the ProForm Tour de France has been recognized as the official training bike for the Toure de France itself.

What makes the ProForm Tour de France so different from other training bikes? Well, this is a bike that is quite smart. The bike is installed with what is called an iFit Live technology. What it does is to coordinate with Google Maps and allow you to bike through a mapped course on the map. The bike will then get information on the contours and elevation of the road you’re biking and based on that information it will rise up and down. So what the bike does is to simulate riding on that road. To make it more difficult for your body, the friction of the rear wheel is also  controlled to simulate the drag and the effort of going uphill. This is one training bike that is virtually as good as the real one.

The Contortionist: most portable bike ever!

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I find this amazing. The Contortionist is a bike that can be folded into its entire circumference. The entire mechanism somehow folds in between its 24-inch wheels. And it leaves a couple of handles so you can drag the thing around.

From The Gadget Blog:

The inventor? A 24-year-old student from Battersea, London. Dominic Hargreaves was apparently unsatisfied with his folding bike—which collapsed on him—so he set out to design his own, with an emphasis on hardiness. The mechanical reality that makes this gadget work? The front whell, engineered to rotate and reposition to make compactness achievable. I guess the only way you can make it any more compact is if you use smaller wheels or actually engineer folding wheels.

Via The Gadget Blog.