Bike Sizing in the Real World -- or, Making the Bike Fit YOU

Following up on previous posts about bike fit, most recently about Stack-to-Reach Ratio, I've been considering how this applies in the 'real world', specifically what lessons I might learn in relation to my own bicycles. 

Let's take my Enigma Etape and my Surly Cross Check. Both are bespoke builds, that is, all the components have been chosen by me, based on my needs and preferences. It's no surprise to see both bikes sporting identical saddles, pedals and racks! However, the 'heart' of each bike is very different: the Etape is completely custom, i.e. made to measure based on my body (size / proportion / strengths / weaknesses / flexibility / range of motion) and my desire to do long rides in comfort, whereas the Cross Check is a stock frame in a stock size, a bike with a reputation for versatility but with proportions that are somewhat 'long' in reach. 

Over the years, I've tended to think of these bikes in terms of their differences. Most of what I decided I wanted from the custom Enigma build was informed and shaped by my experiences with the Cross Check. My thought process was fairly linear: I don't like X about the Cross Check, so I want Y on the Enigma. 

Bike Sizing: Stack And Reach

When it comes to bike size and fit, the industry has suddenly started talking a new language. And high time too. 

I am flying out to Oregon in a few weeks and for the first time intend to cycle while I'm there. Details are still to be confirmed but one option I've been looking into is hiring ('renting' for the Americans) a road bicycle from a bike shop. But my bitter experience has taught me that stock sizes provided by mainstream manufacturers simply do not fit me. Nonetheless, I have indulged in two short periods of daydreaming about renting a bicycle utterly different from my own, just for the sake of it. 

As it happens, the only two models of bicycle available for me to hire are

• the Raleigh Capri (year/model and precise build not known)

the 2015 Raleigh Capri Carbon 1 (not available in the UK)

What Determines "Ride Quality"?

Bicycle frame as architecture

I started writing this post nearly 18 months ago, trying to make sense of what makes a bicycle comfortable to ride. At the time, the particulars of geometry fascinated me. Later that year, my drive to find a bike that would let me ride longer and further without pain led me to having a custom titanium touring frame designed and built, and then a complete bespoke bicycle built up around that. 

After a year with the custom titanium bicycle, I have found myself wondering how much of my satisfaction with this bike is the result of the geometry (and size/shape/proportion) and how much is down to frame material (and tubeset). Would a steel frame made to exactly the same plan have done the job just as well as titanium has? 

Good Advice on Solving Fit Issues with a Custom Bike

(c) John Weirath, PT http://www.bicyclestudiogj.com/

A call-out to one of my favourite bloggers:  Bike and Body in Grand Junction, Colorado, U.S.A.

The writer is both an experienced fitter and a qualified physiotherapist. I have particularly enjoyed and benefited from his thoughts on Women's Specific Design (key posts here and here) but the entire blog is worth a browse - tons of insightful, detailed yet clear and concise information and advice on performance training, correct bike fitting, physiology and ways to identify and address common problems like knee pain, neck/shoulder pain, also bike reviews, ride reports... and how to approach having a custom frame designed and built up!

This post yesterday chimes exactly with what my own experience has been, both in terms of fit problems and appropriate solutions, resulting in a new bike completely customised for me. I'd love to have had this particular post as a reference at the beginning of my custom-build experience but perhaps it's just as well I didn't, in case I took it too prescriptively. Nonetheless, as it happens, I've done almost exactly what he did here for one of his clients with very similar issues.... except that the custom bike for her turned out to be a Seven after all. 

Post Bike Fitting: A Custom Bike? My first serious look at Titanium

Titanium framebuilding (via Google image search - probably a Moots frame)

In conjunction with my bike fitting at Cyclefit in early July, I initiated conversations with Julian Wall about having a full custom frame built. By this time, my investigations into carbon had come to a dead end, so my interest was now focused entirely on titanium as the frame material for any bike I might have built.

Full Bike Fitting #1: Start from the ground (and work your way up)

You may recall my frustrations back in the spring over the various problems causing me to bail out on longer rides. The excruciating saddle-area pain that kicked in just a few miles into Adam's 'unofficial Dunwich Dynamo' ride back in June was the (literal) kick in the butt I needed to send me back to the fitter to get to the bottom of what may have been causing all my problems. (Sorry about the puns. No, sorry, I'm not sorry.)

The problems weren't just from saddles. I was also having bouts of hand and wrist pain, including sharp shooting pains when I would lift my hands to shift them from one position on the handlebars to another, the 'trigger' being the easing of pressure, the pain being something like hitting the funny bone in your elbow. Except not at all funny.

And there were my everlasting blasted knees.