I spent yesterday at the Cycle Show for the Press and Trade Day, a chance for the good and great of the cycling industry to shake hands, chat about the current cycling scene and drink copious amounts of coffee.
My plan had been to grab 30 minutes away from the Wattbike booth to take some photos for the blog but, alas, we were so busy that I hardly had chance to draw breath. There was lots of interest from the media and a good number of bike shop owners dropping by to see how they might be able to use the Wattbike for Bike Fit sessions.
Bike Fit is something which is increasingly coming to the fore for the cycle industry, not only do people want the best equipment, they also want to know that they have set it up correctly. We discussed with many bike shop owners how to use the Wattbike to set up correct bike position - the great thing being that you can actually see how a small change in bar/saddle position affects technique and power output in real time. It's fair to say there were some astonished faces as to how accurate this works.
I met a lot of people who came to try a Wattbike for the first time, including a guy who was doing the Race Across America - his focus was to ensure that he reached the start line in the perfect shape to take on what has to be one of the toughest events on the bike. He loved the idea of building up an archive of his own performance data so that he could see he was on track for the RAAM but also to check for early signs of injury. Every little bit of assistance is welcome when you're doing such an extreme event.
We also had Tom Peck from the Independent on the Wattbike booth. Tom was sent to the show to learn how to ride a bike and our guys gave him the run down on good pedal technique, we tried not to make him sweat too much. He did manage to transfer some of the learning on the Wattbike out onto the test track at the show. Nice video below from the Cycle Show team.
I also met up with Phil Jones, you may know him from his Race-Pace.net blog. Phil had got in touch with us to see if we could help out Simon Richardson on his road to recovery. Phil was just one of many people who follow Wattbike on Twitter who came over to say hello, great to put faces to so many twitter names.
I'm back at the NEC tomorrow, where we'll be once again conducting pedal technique analysis sessions. I will certainly put time aside to get some photos and put them up on the blog next week. On Sunday I have my last sportive of the season and (hopefully) some unseasonably warm British weather.
Enjoy your weekend