Global Ride: Big Island Rides Hawaii Series

I'll confess up front that I'm not an expert cyclist. I have a balance problem and tend to run into rock walls. Cycling outside is just not happening for me.These are wonderful! Not only can I revisit places I've been and love, but I can visit them from a different point of view, and my 'fitness break' just flys by. I also get to go places I've never been and for a person who just enjoys new places and adventures, this is a great exercise solution.First I timidly tried it with just the music. The next day I tried with one of the coaches, who was supportive and not at all intimidating! I enjoyed it and got one of the best workouts I've had in years.I loved the little water drops. They made it feel so real. In fact, I loved everything about it and hope to get more of them in the future. These will keep me busy for quite some time.Anyone can benefit from these. If you are an expert cyclists, you'll just be doing a lot better than the rest of us, but we'll never know. :)

I purchased this because one of the workouts is on the same road I run when on Maui. This isn't the drop-dead beauty you will see in a travel video, but rather looking at the road with scenery in the periphery.I felt it would be a good recovery workout, which it is, as you can pedal at a reasonable pace while looking at nice scenery. However, it's hard to follow the instructions from the coaches if you wanted a particular kind of workout (hills or sprints for example). I prefer videos that display the gear or resistance that you should be riding and the cadence you should be spinning. It's hard to know that you are in the proper settings and pushing the designed effort (the Australian coach seems to give the best clues). You can tell when the course is going up or down hill, so you are on your own to adjust your workout to match the terrain and track your effort to the kind of workout you desire. I use this when I just want to get on the bike and spin.If you are looking for nice scenery on a recovery workout and you are experienced with indoor training, you will probably find this set useful. If you like to be guided through a high intensity workout, this isn't the right set.I've not done the palates effort, but it seems to be led well.

On the set I received the quality of audio recording is pretty poor. There is a lot I can't hear due to it being muffled. Female coaches are quite difficult to hear as they sound muffled, the men's voice is clearer but again not that great. The camera work is pretty low rate. It looks like they strapped a go pro to a scooter and drove around Hawaii. For a "professional" DVD set one would assume a polarizing lens would be used in full sun situations....Nope, you just end up watching washed out full sun filming. The editing is pretty low rent as well. Using this DVD with your bike on a trainer is a little frustrating as the editing style is slash and burn, one minute your "riding" along the shore line and all of a sudden it's filmed on some side street. The music used is a artificial techno style, which I personally dislike. One ride was filmed after it rained so you end up with water spots on the lens. Really??? The lens couldn't be wiped off? Or edited out the rain on lens?My personal opinion is I could of done a better job of filming with my go pro. Had I known how poor the filming, editing and voice recordings were prior to purchase I would of passed on purchasing this.

The price was right. What could be better than THREE hour long training rides around the Big Island of Hawaii?! This was the best training ride I've had on my stationary bike. THe first time I rode without looking at my watch every 5 minutes. The terrain driven challenge motivated me to my best inside workout. Happy training. I highly recommend this.

I already own their Italy 3-pak, and I recommend the Hawaii series. The DVDs in the set while in the 45 to 44 minute length are good for both speed spinning and simulated hill work. I use the 45 minute DVDs as a high cadence warm-up for weight training. The longer DVD, Stredurance is good for both a 50 plus minute paceline tempo workout coupled with 20 or so minutes of hill work. The scenery is beautiful and varied enough to keep the mind engaged. I have found the company, Global Ride, to be tremendously responsive and honest with me. I have been very satisfied with all of the products I have purchased. I do find their videos to be among the best I have viewed for indoor training and wish they had more: I own approximately 18 virtual cycling DVD's from 4 separate vendors. I recommend the Hawaii series set very highly. I rate this set at 5 star level.

I enjoyed these rides but as others have commented, the voice track is poorly mixed and is much too soft in relation to the music track. You have to struggle to make out what the coaches are saying (you feel like you are trying to figure out the lyrics to a rock song). If there were visual cues in the form of a dashboard this would be less significant but even after watching the same video several times, I miss cues to get out of the saddle until I hear instruction to sit back down. The first of the three videos seems to be the worst but all are hard to hear. You can turn off the music track but the ride is pretty boring with nothing but the narration.

The Global Ride DVDs all of them (Big Island Rides, Kauai Hawaii Rides, Maui Rides, Italy Rides, Spain Rides, France Rides) were delivered well before the estimated delivery date. I am an avid rider, both outside and inside (spin and on my trainer). I get a great workout using the Global Ride DVDs.

I was very disappointed to pay the amount of money I did for this and find out the quality was so poor. One of the rides had water drops on the lense throughout most of the ride, and the glare from the sun was not filtered well. This was the most amatuer low budget DVD I have every experienced. The only positives were the fact that it was filmed in Hawaii, and when my weather was cloudy and raining outside I could imagine I was in sunny Hawaii. The quality was poor, I feel like I could have done a better job by strapping my own camera on a bike and riding, and I could have my 11 year old fix the imperfections on some digital software program.