Anybody who’s ever ridden a stationary bicycle coach is aware of that it may be slightly boring simply sitting there, pedaling away, starring on the wall as you try to get a exercise. Many indoor cyclists need one thing a bit extra enjoyable; slightly extra interactive; one thing that makes them really feel as if they’re really on the market on the highway, using their bicycle and taking within the surroundings.
That’s the place the epicPLANET collection of epicRIDES Digital Biking DVDs come into play.
The epicRIDES DVD collection at present consists of 13 totally different movies, every of which contains a scenic and difficult bike experience from someplace in North America. As you watch the DVD, you pedal together with the cyclists on display screen and attempt to preserve tempo as you climb, dash, and descend – not in actual life, however nearly with the help of your bicycle coach and the on display screen video.
The DVDs are primarily of mixture of footage from a car-mounted digicam and a collection of bicycle mounted GoPro recorders. As you comply with the experience on display screen, the digicam angles slowly change from one view to the subsequent, serving to you to maintain the experience contemporary and thrilling, relatively than simply starring at one boring digicam angle for a whole exercise.
The general high quality of the movies is sweet, however I feel the compression used to suit the movies onto DVD has degraded the standard a bit, as pixelation and movement blurs are noticeable.
All through the digital bike experience, a big on-screen digital dashboard retains observe of your progress within the exercise. The dashboard graphics work to tell you of how briskly you need to be pedaling (roughly), how lengthy you’ve been pedaling, and the way a lot time you’ve bought left till you attain the highest of huge and tough climbs.
It might sound slightly foolish to some that you’d watch a digital simulation of an precise bicycle experience as an alternative of merely getting out on the highway and collaborating in an actual highway experience of your individual. However there are a number of sorts of people that can profit from a digital biking expertise like those supplied by epicPLANET.
For instance:
Individuals who reside in areas the place harsh winter climate prevents them from biking through the wintertime.
Busy businessmen and people who don’t have the time to truly conduct an extended outside experience, however can use digital biking on a bicycle coach to get in a fast exercise every time they’ve the time.
And people of us who merely wish to experience a bicycle coach each as soon as and some time and whereas doing so, expertise what it may be wish to conduct a bicycle experience on the opposite facet of the state, nation, or planet.
That’s one of many actual neat issues concerning the collection of epicRIDES movies. When you may have the ability to exit your door and go on a bodily bike experience of your individual, doing so most likely implies that you’ll be compelled to cycle on a highway that you’ve got ridden down dozens of occasions earlier than. With these DVDs, nevertheless, you’ll be able to transport your self to place, to a location that in actual life you may not ever have the prospect to expertise for your self. And over the course of the DVD, you get to visually expertise what it may be wish to experience your bicycle in that space.
With the epicRIDES movies, you’ll be able to take a biking journey by means of Vermont’s Inexperienced Mountains on someday after which experience your bike by means of tunnels of inexperienced bushes in southern Louisiana on the subsequent. The next day you could possibly be biking by means of the hills surrounding Austin, Texas, and the subsequent day by climbing up Beartooth Move within the state of Montana.
The digital biking movies are the core of the epicRIDES expertise, however every video additionally comes with a downloadable coaching information (a PDF doc full of info that you need to use to reinforce your expertise when using with a bicycle coach), a downloadable route map (which exhibits the featured bicycle experience on an interactive Google map), and a downloadable PowerProfile (which is a time-based exercise file that’s appropriate with programmable indoor bicycle trainers).
Driving a bicycle coach isn’t for everybody, however for these of us that do experience with a coach and are in search of a option to make our time on the coach a bit extra pleasant, a digital biking expertise just like the one supplied by epicPLANET within the epicRIDES DVD collection is definitely value a attempt.
My suggestion is that you probably have a bicycle coach, you no less than attempt enhancing your experience with one of many epicRIDES DVDs. Watch the video, give the digital biking expertise a attempt, and for those who prefer it, decide up one other DVD from the collection.
This can be a area of interest product for a really particular particular person. If the standard of the video have been a bit greater, I’d give it a 9 out of 10, however due to the small loss in video information resulting from poor video compression, I’ve to offer the collection an 8.
For extra info on the epicRIDES Digital Biking DVD collection, please go to: www.epicplanet.television
This product was despatched to Bicycle Touring Professional for gratis for the aim of this assessment.
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