As some background, before purchasing both the Omnium Portable Trainer (w/ the progressive resistance) AND the Omnium Portable Track Trainer (w/ low or normal roller resistance), I was in the market search for portable trainers that I could use for pre-race warming up on my Time Trial bike, road bikes, and fixed gear track bikes. I already have a Wahoo Kickr smart trainer and a set of Elite Arion Digital B smart rollers at home, both of which are not portable, but met my home training needs for all bikes.
My requirements for portable trainers were as follows:
1) portability. I needed to be able to fit a trainer in a small bag and throw it in the trunk of my car or gear duffel bag.
2) No wheel or skewer removal. Once I get my TT bike setup with its disk wheel on, I really dislike having to mess with the bike again after that. I need to be able to quickly get off the trainer and get to the start line in just a few minutes, stress free. Oddly, having to remove the turbo trainer skewer from my TT Zipp disk wheel and put the normal one on stresses me out, which causes me to lose focus.
3) Only the back wheel on the rollers, not both (like traditional rollers). I say this because even though I use the full, both-wheel on rollers at home to work on cadence and bike handling, for me at least, that takes a fair amount of concentration and energy. While warming up for a race, that concentration again derails my focus, let alone if I fall off the rollers, which is entirely possible and would totally ruin my mental focus for a race.
4) Compatible with both standard and rear drop-outs. This rules out all the traditional trainers, wheel on or off, that require you to skewer the bike into the trainer. They are not designed for track bike rear drop outs, which leaves rollers.
5) Compatibility with both TT/Road bikes with gears and fixed gear track bikes. So this is what led me to buy both of the Omnium rollers. The rollers with the progressive resistance wont work for the track bike, because you are stuck in something like a 45:15, 48:15, or 50:15 chain ring/cog configuration, and if you want to do a low resistance high cadence warmup, that is impossible. At 120rpm or higher, youll be in threshold or higher power and burning matches like there is no tomorrow. In contrast, I cant warm up on my TT bike with the Omnium track rollers because I need to be able to do a variety of power intervals, some of which are short burst or threshold level, which becomes problematic with such low resistance rollers, and even more so if you have your TT tires at 120psi.
In short, the Omnium rollers met all my above requirements. They are also very sturdy and easy to assemble, very light, and I absolutely love their color (red is my favorite color). I will add one caveat here, however, in light of the track rollers. Many higher end track bikes use tubular tires that have a minimum PSI of 140psi. I run mine at 150psi. They are hard as rocks. I realized quickly that even at that minimum PSI, I was not able to produce any higher than 100w of power even at a cadence of 125rpm. Thats actually not enough power for me to warm up, and the power/resistance is so low that its difficult to maintain good form at 125rpm. 100w isnt even near the top of recovery zone for me and is very unrealistic. When I do my high cadence drills on my track bike, I need at least the mid to upper endurance zone or something in the 180-200w range. Cant be done on these rollers with 140psi. However, what you can do is throw a towel underneath the back rollers, and I was able to maintain steady state 200w or more at 120rpm. Easy solution, but not ideal of course. Ideal would be an Omnium track trainer with two resistance settings for accommodate higher PSI tubular tires. I know some other roller companies have done this, so maybe Feedback Sports can follow suit. But in summary, these are awesome rollers, and customer support is fantastic.
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