Some of the most popular posts on Keefer Madness have been Garmin related — mostly about fixing and resetting various models in the Edge cyclocomputer lineup.

Well with my first Garmin Edge 305, I got the cadence and heart rate accessories. Cadence is still humming along, but the heart rate monitor has been not accurately reporting heart rate over the past couple months. Two battery changes and various attempts to wet the contacts and my skin beneath have not resurrected the reliability of the heart rate monitor strap.

Do you all have any further suggestions, or is it time to just bite the bullet and buy a replacement heart rate monitor strap. If so, another Garmin-branded one or a different ANT+ heart rate monitor?

Find yourself a cyclist and you’ve also likely found someone who doesn’t like spending any amount of time indoors on a bike trainer — myself included. We all see the bike trainer though as a necessary evil for those days that are too wet, too cold, too dark, or all of the above. That being said, while an hour on the bike outdoors flies by in the blink of an eye, the same amount indoors on a stationary trainer (or rollers) feels a lot longer.

So many of us look for a variety of ways to pass the time — TV, movies, upbeat music, etc. Well, a recent edition of one of my favorite audio podcasts — The FredCast, I found a new source for inexpensive, yet motivating training videos called The Sufferfest. A couple weeks ago, I ordered their “Downward Spiral” video, which is a double set of descending intervals for a nice, hard 60 minute workout.

The music is a nice motivating, bass thumping soundtrack of a bunch of bands I’ve never heard of, but help you keep the right cadence. The video starts with with a downhill mountain bike warmup, before going into a combination of suburban crit and 2009 ASO Pro racing footage from Paris-Roubaix and Fleche-Wallone for the intervals.

While riding through the video this evening, I had it playing on my iPhone, while listening through headphones. This was great for getting the music qnd cadence, but I think I need to have this playing through the television’s bigger screen to get the most out of the video.

Regardless, at under ten bucks, well worth it to add into the rotation. I’ll probably add their other video, “Fight Club” to my rotation as well, and sure hope they continue to make more motivational videos specifically for the trainer for those days when getting out on the road just don’t happen.

So I’ve not been able to log three rides on my new wheelset — the Shimano RS-80 wheels, which were a warranty replacement and upgrade for my Shimano Ultegra wheels that came with my 2009 Specialized Tarmac Expert.

While a full review may come down the road, after some more rides and a few races on them, I wanted to give a first impression review of the Shimano RS-80 clincher wheelset.

After doing a little surfing about the wheels on the web, it’s my understanding that these wheels are basically the Dura-Ace wheels. except with the heavier Ultegra hubs. Moving from the Ultegra wheels, these guys were just shy of a half of a pound lighter — which is substantial seeing as it’s rotational weight that’s being reduced. On the three rides so far, I’ve found these carbon-alloy wheels spin up quite well. Out of the saddle I can especially feel a noticeable difference over my last wheels. These transfer power from the crank to the rear wheel exceptionally efficiently, while the 16 butted, bladed front spokes radially laced make the front wheel pretty aerodynamic.

The wheels are pretty stiff and don’t flex, even in turning at speed. Even with the substantial weight and reasonable power I transfer to my back wheel, they feel strong.

Even though carbon is known to absorb road chatter, I felt more numbing in the hands more often, especially in my most recent ride on these wheels, though this may or may not be the wheels at fault. I slightly lowered my riding position at the same time that I swapped these wheels out, so that may be at least partially to blame.

Visually, the wheels are pretty nice looking, with a pretty standard black and silver decals. The only real “bling” to the wheels are the shiny red nipples. Because the brake surface of the wheel is aluminum, no special (read: expensive) brake pads are needed. My Ultegra brakes stopping power was good and quiet with the new wheels.

While a lot more miles are needed to really run these through tests, my first impressions leads me to believe these are a good wheel upgrade at a reasonable price, along with a good introduction to carbon wheels. They’re not a full carbon wheel, but because of that allow for no switchover in brake pads, and are strong and stiff wheels, even for bigger riders, like myself. These are a great upgrade to your wheels for under the grand mark street price.

While I’ve been a bit slack on writing reviews, I’m trying to get back into the swing of things with the Keefer Madness reviews. I haven’t gotten any games lately to do reviews, and I guess I should go back and write reviews of the games I already own. I’m putting that on my list of things to do. But, with my time and interest in cycling skyrocketing over the lat 3 years or so, I’ve created a new category of reviews on Keefer Madness – cycling products.

Now I just need some products to review. I put out a Twitter message in hopes I would get some review products. Nothing so far. So consider this a plea from those of you with cycling product hookups. If you’ve got connections, let me know. I’d love to review all kinds of cycling products – nutrition, components, bikes (yeah I wish..)