Hello all. I’m fairly new to TrainerRoad and riding on the trainer. Only 4 weeks into base phase on my new Wahoo Kickr and I had a front wheel spoke break today. Yes, age of the wheel is probably the culprit but I want to ask the following:
-Does riding on the trainer put more stress that usual onto the front wheel?
If so,
-What can be done to reduce the stress?
-Are there any front wheels on the market designed just to be put on for stationary riding (I’m thinking some heavy cheap material?)
(Yes, I know Climb is an option, so please don’t tell me to get that. Gotta spread purchases out or the spouse will get on my case)
People have been riding on trainers for decades and 99.99% of them just leave their normal front wheel on. If they have multiple wheelsets they may swap their training set on for a race set.
The only thing I would pay attention to is to keep the front tire properly inflated and to maybe rotate it every once in a while so you don’t develop a flat spot if your bike is on there for a long time. But even then there isn’t a ton of weight on it between sessions so that might not be an issue the way it may be with a car.
If you broke a spoke while on the trainer I would imagine that it was already broken or near broken before the bike was put on the trainer. Hitting cracks and bumps in the road will put much more force on a wheel then you would on a trainer unless you jumped and slammed your whole weight plus some onto it.
I’ve been using trainers for 35 years and never had a front wheel issue. That being said, there is some weight on the front wheel so an otherwise primed to fail spoke could break while on the trainer as well as it could outside.
Another possibility - Anyone else (human or animal) in the house? Maybe something got bumped when you weren’t looking.
I would say a lot less wear and tear than you would experience outdoors. Aside from tire wear, which obviously doesn’t occur inside, I frequently let my tire pressure lapse down to ridiculous levels, like basically flat. Outdoors, you’d be primed for a pinch flat at well above what I sometimes run and I’ve never had a flat inside. That tells me that despite standing up and putting weight on the front end, it doesn’t come close to the force hitting a bump or a dip outside would generate at speed.