Bike Fit

Thursday of this week I had a bike fit from Rassmussen's. I had read the Punk Rock Cycling blog that Kelli did about her bike fit and decided I needed to have one done. I bought my bike from there at the end of '07 and they did a quick fit on me, but I know that my bike isnt set up the best it could be for me. I want to have it the best it can be for my 6+ bike rides this summer. I got there and Adam aske me some questions about any pain I was having and tested my flexibility. My shoulders get stiff and I had a little bit of knee pain from last year that luckily has not returned this year. I am not flexible. Also my aerobars are to long, i cant reach the shifters without lifting my arm off the rest. He recorded me biking for about 10 seconds and then we looked at some angles of my hips and shoulders. He was really surprised I havent had any lower back or hamstring problems because my knee angle was at the bottom of the range. So we lowered my seat a little bit. I felt to squished. so we raised it up a little and put on a shorter stem. By shorted I mean I went from a 9.0 to a 6.5. Big difference. Also flipped the arm rests around so it brought the shifters closer to me. They still feel a little long, but I think I will test this out first before investing in a new set of bars. We also lowered my handle bars. I got back on and WOW, I felt so much faster already, lol. I felt like I was able to put more power into my stroke and my stroke was so much smoother. In the video we compared the 2 and the first one looked like I was just sitting on my bike and leaning over. The last one, I looked more like a sprinter coming out of the blocks. A much more aggressive position. Adam also put 1 shim in each shoe to get my knees to follow the same line and in my left shoe, added a couple risers because my right tibia is slightly longer than my left so my hips were rocking quite a bit, but are much better now. My seat ended up being 1/2 a centimeter lower and moved quite forward quite a bit more which helps me sit on my aero bars a lot better. I am excited to try it out this weekend.