Bike Fitting

About a month ago, I had a bike fitting done by Coach Ken Mierke, a local triathlete coach and active poster on Trifuel.com.  I had originally asked for advice on Trifuel back a few months ago about getting a bike fit as I felt too stretched out on the bike and in general felt uncomfortable on long ride.

When I got my bike back in April it was my first road bike – ever.  While I had some very good advice from a fairly serious cyclist friend with respect to the actual purchase itself, I had never got it fit to me.  I assumed that much of the summer my discomfort with the bike was because my relative newness to the cycling sport.  Remember, the last time I rode a bike prior to April was basically in middle school (no, I’m not kidding – I’m dead serious).  And to some degree my lack of previous cycling played a part in it – my first few rides my back hurt after about 20 minutes, but over time that slowly crept up to a number of hours before I would start hurting.  I assumed that this meant I was getting more comfortable on the bike.  But even so, I didn’t feel as powerful in certain positions on the bike. 

It also didn’t feel natural.  I was cycling with a friend and he had just recently gotten a new bike and had it fit to him – during the ride he commented that “It feels so comfortable that it’s like being in a lazy boy recliner…in the aero position”.  That got me thinking that perhaps something was amiss in my configuration.

So I posted a post to Trifuel to ask for some advice on bike fitting.  A number of folks responded, including Coach Mierke.  He has an office a mere 15 minutes away, so it seemed like a logical match.

I made an appointment and went early on a Saturday morning back a number of weeks ago to get my bike fitted.  After asking some questions about what didn’t feel right, how much I cycling and a number of other things; we put my bike up on a Computrainer and he had me start cycling.  Nothing too hard, just a relatively easy spin.  Over the course of the 45-60 minutes he tweaked a number of things.  Each time I would get off the bike, he would tweak it – and I would get back on and try it out.  Rinse, repeat.

A few key changes he made were pulling the aerobars in closer together – which made me feel more compact…and more aerodynamic.  He also brought my seat forward a little bit – helping me to not feel so stretched out.  In addition he raised my seat a fair bit.  I had a feeling for quite a while that my seat height was too low.  By raising it I feel like I get more power out of my legs.  Of course, all of these changes are specific to me.

I’ve gone on a few longer rides (at least two hours) since then where I was aero most of the rides and it feels quite a bit better. And the numerous weekday shorter rides also feel great. While I haven’t gone upwards of the three hour mark since the fit – all signs are pointing to it definitely helping on the comfort scale.  It’s a bit early to determine if it will also help me get more power out of my cycling (or help me on the run due to lower effort on cycling) – but I would venture to guess that it will since I’m not dealing with the annoyance of my back during the ride.

So all in all, well worth the $150 that I paid.  I’m also looking at using his coaching services, I’ll probably be making a decision on that at some point here in the next week now that my knee is pretty much all happy again.

I would say that I do wish I had taken the time to get my bike fit BEFORE I started a year of training – I can’t recommend doing that enough.

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