Whilst she was training this week I was left noodling on how I we were going to take her to the next level as I had no way of measuring her baseline or performance. What I really wanted was the ability to measure heart rate, cadence and power but there was a problem. To move her bike to my setup, change profiles etc, etc was not going to fly. Too fiddly (she is not the geek I am) and too time consuming (fair point). I did not want anything that would get in the way of her riding so I settled on liberating an old polar device for which I could not find the heart rate strap (go figure - never saw that coming right) so I made do with cadence for the first week. This still left me with the problem of finding the strap and quite frankly not fully trusting the old device. Even buying a Garmin would not solve the problem as the one thing I really wanted was power and I could not think of anything other than moving her to my Kickr as a power meter for her bike at this stage is not in the budget.I love it when the universe steps in. On Saturday whilst returning from a trip we stopped off in town and I could not leave without a wander around REI. I must have been called because as I browsed the isles I don't normally browse, I came across the Kinetic inRide, a brief look suggested it would do everything I needed. Excitedly I did a quick review search on my phone and found very mixed reviews from "love it" to "hate it". The questions were, would it fit my older trainer? and would it work? Well it was REI so if it did not work it would be easy to return and at $130+tax it was just too good to not try.
Now I would love to tell you I got it out of the box a boom it was awesome. Nope it was not that simple. One of the attractions for me was that the HRM was a Wahoo device and would work with the Wahoo fitness app I already had installed on my phone. I put the strap on, made sure Bluetooth was enabled on my phone and fired up the app. Nothing, fiddled a bit, nothing, fiddled a bit more, wow a heart rate of 181 bpm. Hmmmm, unless my heart was in a parallel universe either winner a race or running for its life, that number was not right. It then took a lot of Bluetooth fiddling and shutting down and restarting of my phone before finally I got a reading I believed. Had I not persisted it would have been easy and honestly reasonable to give up thinking the device did not work.
Next up I loaded the Kinetic App onto my iPad expecting everything to be working. Nope, the HRM was not working. I checked Bluetooth and it was connected. Long story short it took a lot more fiddling before the HRM popped into life.
Fitting the power meter on the other hand was really simple. Insert the grommet, slide in the magnet and stick on the sensor. After a couple of false starts the app sprang to life and all the sensors were reading.Sarah completed a 30 minute ride and it was awesome to get the data I had no idea of how I was going to get at the beginning of the week. My first impression is that the HRM is comparable with the Garmin and Polar devices I have used. When looking at the cadence it was reading lower and a little more erratically than the old Polar device but then it is reading it from the rear wheel and not the cranks. The good news was that it was lower and I would rather that than the other way round. The speed looked accurate which left the power. I cannot say if it is accurate or not at this point without riding myself for a comparison. It was however consistent and for training purposes that is what I was looking for. I personally don't mind if it is high or low as all I am looking for is a relative improvement. As long as the number is consistent I can obtain a baseline and measure improvement relative to the baseline. For the price as long as you have the other equipment it is a great investment and by far the cheapest method of getting both power and heart rate in one bundle.
The Kinetic App is a little quirky and the data on the front page does not match the history. It takes a while for the sensors to be found. Sarah started the ride with a heart rate of 73 and 10 minutes in it had not changed. She messed with the strap a few times before it popped into life. The App is also not entirely intuitive. However, if you are willing to overlook a few shortcomings (that I hope will be fixed in later releases) it does provide a simple platform to use. You simply put on the HRM, fire up the app, wait for the sensors to register and select a workout. Simple enough for Sarah to operate without having to geek out. I really like the automatically calculated HRM and Power zones and the ability to build your own workout sessions.
Above the Lifetime Stat's (Left) show a time of 00:35 minutes and a distance of 8 miles. The workout history (Right) shows the real duration of 00:30:06 minutes and the overview below shows the actual distance of 4.81 miles. Not entirely sure what is going on here but I suspect it is a bug.
First Impression Conclusion
You can't beat the price if you already have a Kinetic Fluid trainer and the required technology. You will need some patience and a little technical savvy as it was not plug a play for me. The app has a few issues that I hope will be fixed in future releases. Overall I like what it delivers and if it continues to deliver and the software improves I will be excited. I will reserve my final verdict for later once I have had a chance to live with it.
I am proud of the effort Sarah is putting in and now we have the numbers and ability to build a training plan to help her develop. My fingers are crossed that it continues to perform - time will tell.
Until next time Max Life Out - Every day is a gift.
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