From Cycling and Suffering - November 15, 2013 by Chad Rector

"SportCrafters OverDrive Progressive Resistance Drum for Rollers: Early Impressions"

I’ve been able to get some more time riding the Sportcrafters Progressive Resistance drum now that the weather is starting to become less friendly in Michigan. I bought these seeking more resistance for my cycleops rollers which are identical to sportcrafters rollers.

Last season I was using the mag resistance unit available through cycleops to increase the resistance of my rollers. The reason I needed more resistance is because when I lock the bike on the rollers with the fork mount for some interval training, especially sprint efforts, there simply was not enough get a good workout. I think 800 watts was about as high as I was able to get them using my road bike and 700×23 tires. So it worked for most of my workouts but I could easily max it out for any max efforts that were under 1 minute in duration.

In walks the progressive resistance roller drum that I finally installed this fall. The resistance ramp up seems to happen pretty quick. I can go from a nice easy recovery in the 39×20-something (11-25 cassette) combination to an easy tempo (roughly 250-275 watts for me) in a 39×14 combination. I did a few efforts in the big ring but not full on sprints yet but I can tell you that the resistance is quite a bit higher than the rollers with mag resistance unit. I was pushing near threshold in 53×20-something at an rpm of around 90-95.

So, while I’m still early on in the usage of the product I’m very optimistic that once CX season is over and I start to bring things indoors more often that I will be able to get in better max effort workouts than I have in the past. At the rate that the drums increase resistance it may even mean that I can’t max out the resistance at max sprint. This is something that I haven’t been able to obtain with a trainer as the tire will slip on the trainer’s drum.

More to come as the cold weather keeps moving in for the season.

We look forward to more feedback on the OverDrive Drum as your season continues.  Thank you for your comments!