Fit for Bike; Bike fit Part 1

Yeah not the most inspiring post title! I waited most of the week and after a great massage last night my legs are 100% back after last weekend, I wanted to make sure there was no impediment to the fitting.

So having walked past a large brown box which has been sat in the hall for two weeks I finally managed to get my bike fit started today…only started mind you!

I headed to my new…so new in fact that the grand opening is tomorrow night, local Retul fitter, Julian Franco, who is also the owner and name above the door for Franco bikes check out their website, really simple idea and really nice bikes, currently road; racing or endurance with Tri and other models to follow. There were some finishing touches being made to his new store in Agoura Hills, see below for an invite to the opening and we worked around the painters. The first thing was to actually build the bike, so we headed over the parking lot to Wins Wheels who whipped it out the box and assembled it; in all of about….5 minutes, those boys got skillz!

I carried it (OMG it weighs errr about nothing!) across the parking lot to Julian’s and we got started. Next was mounting it on the platform and adding pedals, cleats and sticky dots!

I got these shoes two years ago in June from BonkTown for $20 and have had in my closet ever since, they’re not the best shoes in the world but they’re very comfortable…

I had the dots on me and was wired up making sure the camera was picking them all up. After that I was calibrated using a Cyclops trainer hooked into a laptop, a steady gear at 200w for two minutes, some quick checks and we were good to go… I ended up with dots all over…the fitting had me ride at 170w, 200w and 200w steady state to make sure I didn’t move about with the increase in power.

The premise here is to get a good read on my positioning using a motion capture camera which picks up the dots on my body and calibrates all the best angles…so I got on, got off, got on, got off…you get the idea. The end result was almost being fitted, the problem is I have one of these:

and I need one of these

I need a setback seat post to really dial things in so I have ordered one. The idea here is that the carbon-fiber shaft is bonded into the alloy head, setting the saddle rail supports 25mm back of the post’s centerline. This setback will stop me from ankling;  rolling of the foot during the pedal stroke which the one thing outstanding. So standby for Part 2 next week, I actually left my bike behind so all the cable can be trimmed and lubed at Wins I will pick it up tonight but the stem is not going to stop me from riding out with the boys from Franco this Saturday…wanna come play?