The Wahoo fitness Kickr Core V2 is the best smart trainer I've tried among the budget conscious range of smart trainers. The direct drive has a better feel and less worry about wearing out you rear tire than the wheel-on trainers. The Zwift direct drive further reduces wear and tear on a cassette and your rear derailleur. It does feel a little weird using the + and - controls for e-shifting but after I got used to it, it became much more intuitive. There is a seamless feel and it lets you maintain momentum which is especially useful if you are doing Zwift racing events because you can carry your power on the downhill sections to make up time. I'm happy to have an indoor cycling experience that does a pretty good job of replacing outdoor riding when the weather is bad or if I don't want to share the road with cars.
This is my go-to chamois cream. I used to use stuff like diaper rash cream, but it was clogging my chamois up and ruining it, so I had switched to the Assos stuff. It works well, and always washes out.
I would say it doesn't last the entirety of a long ride (over 4 hours), and not in the hottest of hot weather, but I don't think anything does honestly.
And it seems expensive. I guess you have to pay somehow, otherwise you get cheap diaper rash cream, but wreck your shorts. Pick your evil.
Recently moved my trainer from garage to the house. Used this floormat to minimize vibration and protect floor from sweat, etc. This floormat has worked well so far. No complaints from my wife about noise / vibration when I'm on the trainer at 5am and it cleans up easily. I had a mild odor when it first arrived, but I let it sit out for a few days and that has dissipated. I also laid the floormat out for a few days with weight on the ends to prevent them from curling up. All in all, an excellent product.
I got injured and needed a trainer for rehab and thought it would be a good idea to use it to ride later in the winter as well. It was fairly easy to assemble and connect the bike to it. There are adapaters in the kit and while the instructions weren't great (and the link to the video is so old school technology and size) it didn't take too long to figure out. One thing I missed is the fact that you can change the COG to fit your bike better so without it it made noise. The Zwift click attached was easy to connect and so were all the electronics.
All in all pretty good and while I ended up upgrading to the zwift frame since I felt having a bike on a trainer with all the sweat and forces is not really ideal and I was too lazy to reconnect it every time its easy to use and the zwift integration is really cool.
