That is impressive, if only his fight against boredom. He burned an average of 327.69 calories/hr. For me, that's what i burn at 51% of my Max HR. So, he's soft-pedaling mostly and must have been bored to blindness. But - something to talk about

Richard, selling your Tacx??? Not me, not at all. I received the Tacx Fortius Imagic trainer as a gift and all I have to say is … WOW!

You assemble the fort (as I call it), attach a steering frame to it, load the software into your computer and go.

It comes with 3 virtual reality (VR) courses, broken down to smaller courses. You can download other course – velodrome, GPS rides, Polar rides, Google Earth rides. If someone does a ride with Polar or a GPS, they can send it to you and you can do the ride. Cool for getting to know rides or races that are not in your area but that you plan to do.

The cool thing about the fort is the computer controlled brake. When you hit a hill, boom, the brake kicks in and tells you the slope – 4%, 10%, 19.8% on one section in the sand dunes. And you better downshift and/or stand – the brake makes it feel really like a hill. Downhill, the brake revs up and keeps going.

You pick a bike, a course to ride, enter your weight, height, age, sex, HR numbers, you pick weather and wind, opponents, screen display. You can turn the steering on or off – on can have a guide, an arrow that leads you around. If the steering is on, you can have Collision on – get too close to another wheel or a tree or a curb on a turn, boom!! You and the bike crash. If the steerer is off, you just pedal and the fort does the turning on the course. The VRs have sound – people cheering, birds, cars, water, trains, cows, sheep, bugs – the VR terrain is very life like, esp with sound.

You have on-screen displays of you POV – through your eyes, behind you, above, all around, movie. You can calibrate the brake to be less or more, you can decrease or increase slopes and see on screen your speed, power, cadence and HR, along with your time in and remaining, your opponents – if any – positions.

Also, the fort comes with 2 demos of Real Life videos and you can buy more. I have the Alpine Classics (Cols de Telegraphe, Galibier, Alpe d’Huez, etc.) and Lombardy (Como, Ghisallo). These videos are DVDs that run on fortius and are live camera videos of the actual rides done with a camera on a motorcycle or car. I climbed Alpe d’Huez and if you hammer, it all speeds up. If you slow, it all slows. Let me say, the pros do Huez twice as quickly as I did, but it’s winter :-) There is a library of Real Life Videos and many download from people in the USA and Europe and internationally. They have a forum too.

Let me say, I ride 1-2-3 hours and do not feel like a zombie indoor trainer from boredom hell. I look forward to riding indoors and want to continue. It is so motivating. You start off and some opponents are off the front of you some off the back – you can pick opponents by their times on that course. Real people who rode this VR course and submitted their times. Well, darn if I’ll let that guy or gal behind me get ahead. And hey, I see that bike up ahead – chase it down!! .1 of a mile to the finish line, I can see the banner – sprint city. I’m no sprinter, but I went from 400 watts the first day, to 750 to 1200. 1200 watts I put out! Yikes. Of course, I blow up and the pros do over 2,000 watts. But the fortius makes it all fun and the time flies.

It has a record keeper of all your rides, graph, tables (second by second reading – you ride for 10 minutes, you have 600 readings). It averages everything. Coming soon, go online and race a course with others in real time.

The Tacx Fortius is awesome – as a tool and a toy that makes you want to play. And if playing is riding, you have fun getting in shape. Treat it with respect though. Like a real ride. Gloves, water, sweat bands/hat. Get a fa

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