This is part 50 of my ongoing series of articles made to infuriate all those who ‘keep it real’ and ‘just shut up and ride’.

I had one of my many brain farts a couple years ago – I wanted some way of getting constant updates of my power output while time trialing, but without having to break my aero position and drop my head to read the computer. I imagined an ANT+ receiver that would attach to the inside of a TT helmet with a suction cup and give audio updates by vibrating the helmet and making the helmet shell a speaker. I ran the idea by a couple companies but got no bites, presumably because those companies were run by smart people who knew a product with no market when they saw one.

The Olympia Soundbug, a suction cup sound generator, was my original inspiration.

Incredibly enough, my one-time pipe dream is now a reality, thanks to a lucky confluence of three unrelated products. A quick survey of the parts:

Wahoo Fisica
The Fisica by Wahoo Fitness is an ANT+ case for your iPhone, which I reviewed previously. The iPhone bike computer concept interests me because the iPhone is a powerful sensor-laden blank slate that can be programmed to perform a variety of tasks. And sure enough, Wahoo is in the process of adding audio announcements to their app for the benefit of runners, who don’t have the phone mounted before them at all times. I imagine that a runner would jog with headphones on, and the app would periodically interrupt their music to keep them apprised of their pace, distance, HR, etc. I begged Wahoo to add power to the options of audio announcements and they went for it.

The list of audio announcement options is seriously long, but power is the one that matters to me.

Tunebug Shake
The Shake is a helmet mounted sound generator that turns your helmet into a speaker. It can be connected to an iPhone or MP3 player via Bluetooth or wire. I received one a while back to review, and was pleasantly surprised at how well a vented helmet worked as a speaker cone. However, the volume was never high enough to work at speeds of 25 mph and up, so it was useless for road cyclists and I decided not to do a writeup.

The Shake as it is meant to be used.

Garneau Vorttice helmet
Garneau, our team sponsor (there’s your full disclosure), have a new TT helmet out this year, the Vorttice. It’s dimpled and has tiny angled fins that are supposed to create vortices off the trailing edge. Obviously I have no idea about the efficacy of those features, but I can say it’s very nicely constructed, with the foam inner running the full length of the helmet. It also has a Kamm (chopped off) tail, which seems to be the new trend in aero thinking. The shorter helmet is also beneficial for those inevitable moments when you drop your head – a long tail isn’t presented to the wind.

There’s a front intake that leads to three channels that exit out the tail. I generally drench the inside of the visor, but so far (albeit in cool spring racing) nary a drop has sullied this visor – this is easily the best vented TT helmet I’ve tried.

The Vorttice also has a very minimal frontal area, thanks to thin earflaps that sit snugly against your face. You have to flex them out just to put the helmet on.

Put it all together
So here’s how it comes together. You choose what the app will tell you, and set the intervals by time or distance. For example, you can have it tell you your power every ten seconds, and give you time checks every 5k. If you’re doing a 20k race you can also have it give you a 1k to go alert by creating an announcement with 19k intervals. The app allows multiple announcements triggered at different intervals. Wahoo may even add thresholds to the announcements, so it keeps quiet unless, for example, your HR or cadence get too high or low.

The audio signal goes via Bluetooth to the Shake, which just happens to fit perfectly inside the tail of the Vorttice. The solid shell of the Vorttice amplifies sound really powerfully, and the ear flaps shield wind noise from your ears. Even at 35 mph the audio is loud and clear. And, with no earpiece, the whole setup should be legal for racing.

A shortened strap makes for a clean mount.

The Shake tucked away in the helmet tail section.

The Wahoo app is still beta, but should be released soon. I raced with the setup once and found it quite helpful to constantly know my power output without compromising my ability to dodge potholes, squirrels, and other riders. The constant feedback prevented me from blowing myself up when I was fresh and kept me from slacking off when the pain kicked in later. Check it out in action (refresh this page is the video isn’t visible):

So there you have it, your own personal coach inside your head, either your dream come true or your worst nightmare. There’s no truth to the rumor that Manolo Saiz was spotted at a recording studio repeating the word ‘Venga’.