We moved on to testing flexibility. Never a strong point for me. I stretch more than most riders, because I have to. After about twenty minutes of warming up and stretching, I'm reasonably flexible, but it's always a struggle. We tested my hamstrings. Greg's method is to have you flat on your back, both heels down. He bends one straight leg up, waiting not for the "stretch point," but more for where your pelvis starts to rotate. Which is not very far up. My left was less then my right. We measured a bunch of other stuff, including my leg length. Once all the measurements are done, we moved to the Serotta fit machine. This was the newest version, which makes moving any of the contact points very easy. We had it setup with one of my preferred saddles, Speedplay Zero pedals, and Shimano shifters with hoods just like I use.
Based on leg length a few other things, we came up with a starting point for saddle height that is way higher than what I use to setup my bikes. Like 19 mm higher than my traditional reference height. I tried it. Greg also felt that my 9-10 cm of saddle to the bar tops drop was too much for my limited flexibility to accommodate. The reasoning being that excess stretch of the hamstrings prevents the quads from firing properly. So what I had been doing was lowering my saddle, as it made my hamstrings feel less tight on the bike. Except it made my knees hurt. I could spin nice and smooth, but couldn't make big torque while seated. Always wanted to stand up. Which is what led me to believe my saddle was too low in the first place.
I mentioned my "reference saddle height," a measurement 765 mm going straight from the BB to where I sit. I kept my setback around 68-75 mm from the BB to the front tip of the saddle. I've always been afraid to mess with this. But then I got the Rocket7s and switched to Speedplays. This necessitated lowering the saddle quite a bit, as the shoe stack was so much less than with Looks and thick-soled shoes. Then there was cyclocross, MTB pedals, and messing around to see what worked off road. Well, story goes, somehow I lost my way because upon measurement, my bikes were all around 750-755, even lower than I thought. And a whopping 30 mm lower than what the guidelines suggested for my leg length of 89 cm.
We spent a lot of time on the fit cycle, watching my pedaling, talking things out, making cleat adjustments. A lot of experimenting with reach, bar drop, and setback too. The fit bike has spin scan too, and my left/right pedaling was nice and balanced, but I can't go up that high on the saddle without losing a lot of cadence. No matter how high the bars were. But we made a lot of progress. The work on my cleats, some wedges, one shim on the right and my feet weren't nearly as fidgety and twisty as they've always been. For now we settled on a saddle height of 768. Which is about 15mm higher than what I've been riding. Setback we left about the same.
Which leads us to the bars. I had "aggressive" drop to begin with, pretty much the way I've always ridden. High bars really bother me when I'm standing, and I like to stand on climbs. But drop that was aggressive before is like, really aggressive when you raise your saddle a cm or two. So they had to come up. But Greg also wanted me to try shorter reach. I'm always telling beginners to bend their arms more. Well, I wasn't bending mine so much lately. Part of the other problem I had in CX was not getting enough weight on the front wheel. So I'd go with longer stems. Except that doesn't work if you're reaching for the bars. Remember those tight illiopsoas? A pelvis in distress doesn't allow for proper posture, and posture is a far more important aspect of fit than contact points.
Of course, I'm not thrilled about being old and feeble. The best medicine is never going to be an accommodative fit, but instead to fix the body. But there's only so much we can do. I have a pretty short torso in relation to my leg length. That doesn't help much. So now I'm in the market for some forks with longer steerers, if not some new bikes with short top tubes and big head tubes (which luckily is what all the fat-old-guy production bikes are like these days. In the short run, scary stems are part of my life.
So how does it ride? You're supposed to ease into a new position right? Well the first day I applied all my wisdom and "raced" an indoor time trial. Though the Vegas judges had my computrainer at 280 watts, my PM had 304, an encouraging 14 more than I rode on the same course in January. Can't give all the credit to the position change though, as let's face it, March fitness is better than January fitness, even if you don't have any fitness. The next day I went out for a long, flat ride with the Cronoman. I was kind of afraid, as he's somewhat of a winter champion and had been putting in big training mileage with the Blue Steel/Team Type 1 southern NH mafia. I felt fantastic. Was a better 3 hour wattage than I've ridden in a year. All in all, so far so good. But the best part is my knees seem to like it.
Now a few weeks later, I think we can continue to improve. I'm beginning to understand the foot thing and how my hips want to rotate, and how it affects my knees. There is work to be done though. It reinforces my recognition that structural fitness is important to begin with, and it only gets more so as you inch toward death by old age. I hope the younger generation is listening. Believe it or not, I was 26 and strong once. Classic case of if I'd only known then what I know now. Thanks for reading.
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