Where do I even begin to talk about the bike fitting and the awesome people at Get a Grip Cycles?
What is a bike fitting?
Let's start with what is a bike fitting and why it is important. When you get into serious road biking, typically you are looking at riding distances of 20, 30, 40, up to 100+ miles in a single ride. To make this as efficient as possible you get clip-less pedals/shoes which essentially connect your foot to a pedal so if you push down or pull up with your foot, you will be propelling the bicycle forward. Now imagine doing these long 4-8 hour rides, connected to your bike like your legs are pistons, and you can start to see how being comfortable and having the bike properly adjusted could be important.
Since I bought my Trek 2200 road bike in 2004 I have upgraded the pedal, bike shoes, cleats that connect the shoe to the pedal, bike seat, and so on. During all these upgrades I would make minor adjustments to try to make the bike "feel" more comfortable and "faster". Sometimes I tweaked the right thing and it would eliminate a small pain in my calf, and sometimes I tweaked it wrong and would end up with my hip hurting for 2-3 weeks.
The Get a Grip fitting
Now as I looked to embark on a 3,300 mile journey across the country, I decided to get a proper bike fitting. But where to go? Some shops do an hour fitting and charge 50-100 bucks. Some offer 3 hour fittings costing much more. I continued to ask around to some friends and online forums and one name kept surprisingly popping up: Get a Grip. A quick look at their site and I was sold.
I should mention how intimidated I was walking into this shop. You walk in the door and hanging on the wall was easily a bike that cost as much as my rent... for an entire year! This intimidation was quickly calmed by Kevin, who happily greeted me with a hand shake and a friendly "come on in and sit down." It was the kind of greeting where if you told him you were there to buy your first bike in 20 years, or an $8,000 Orbea road bike, he would have treated you exactly the same. It also helped that he walked me to the back to hang out in what felt like a bicyclist's dream lounge. We're talking fully stocked bar, plasma TVs showing the latest European races, and every biking, running, and triathlon magazine you could name.
But I digress from my fantasies of an apartment surrounded by bikes and biking apparel... back to the fitting story.
The fitting was probably the closest experience I've had to being treated like a professional athlete. The Get a Grip fitting is a 3 hour fitting that starts with a 1 on 1 consultation. There are many different ways to fit a bike depending on your goals, so it was great to just explain what I was trying to accomplish. The last thing I wanted was to be fit to a bike to do triathlon races. Kevin excitedly listened to every detail of my cross country trip and what was important to me as a cyclist.
Next the questions began. What feels right about the bike? What do I think is wrong with the bike? Why do I think those things are wrong? What have I tried tweaking to fit the bike properly? What is my physical history? Do I do yoga, pilates, or stretching? If so, how often? Do I have a history of sprains, broken bones, arthritis, and the like? Although I have been lucky enough to not have any of those (knock on wood), I thought it was great how Kevin still explained, in specific detail (we're talking vocab that I hadn't heard since biology in college), how they could adjust this part, or lengthen that one, to ease any chronic pains.
Next we got into measuring: both me and the bike. Kevin quickly measured my bike and jotted down some notes for later. Then we measured both my feet. Then my shoes to find out if I had the right size. At this point Kevin said if my shoes were wrong we'd stop the fitting so that I could get fitted properly for shoes. Additionally, if cost was problem, we'd just do the shoes and cancel the fitting. I found that extremely respectable! The idea that even after almost an hour of talking and measuring he wouldn't charge for any of the fit service, as to ensure I get the best shoes I could afford, is quite admirable. That kind of policy shows true character in the shop and that it puts the best interests of its customers, and the sport, above just selling/pushing products/services for a profit.
Anyway, once again, back to the story.
After the measuring, we found my shoes were actually good enough to move forward (Props to Cycle Smithy for doing a good job on that). Next up it was time to measure flexibility. Kevin tested how far we could stretch my leg in a few directions, similar to a pedal stroke, and found I was quite flexible. Yay to the 15-20 minutes I spend every night stretching. It paid off in more ways than I knew. The interesting thing we did find out here was that I have posture issues, and because of this my right leg appears to be a few centimeters longer than my left. This is something that's probably been causing me seat and leg pains on my left side for years and could easily be corrected when adjusting my cleats/shoes later.
Now it was time to put all the measurements together. Kevin adjusted one of their fitting bikes to what my bike currently had as its measurements. I hopped on, Kevin loaded up the computer, and displayed on the plasma TV in front of me was a digital graph of my pedal stroke, cadence, power output (wattage), and more. With a little resistance on I was doing about 80-90 RPMs and pushing about 100 watts. It felt like it took a little effort to hit those numbers.
I got off the bike and Kevin did the first round of adjustments: bring the handle bars in closer to the seat. This would take the weight off my hands/neck/shoulders and all me more comfort in breathing as my torso would be straighter. He also brought the seat forward to start to put my knee at an optimal position over my pedals. I got back on the bike, started pedaling and guess what: the numbers were all ready way up. I easily spun into 100 RPMs and cranked out 150 watts.
The fitting continued with adjusting the seat by a centimeter, the handle bars by a few centimeters, moving my cleats a millimeter at a time, and so on. I believe in the end the computer was displaying 180 watts as my output and I was spending less effort pedaling than when I first got on the bike!
The final part of the fitting was taking all the new adjustments/measurements from the fitting bike and tweaking my bike to match. I lucked out that we only had to swap out my stem in order to match everything. I was happy to shell out the extra $40 for the new stem, knowing how big of a performance gain I would get from the bike.
The last thing I should mention is that the second, third, fourth, etc. fittings are free to ensure I get the perfect fit before my ride this summer. Again a true display of character to go the extra mile to make the customer happy, effecient, and comfortable!
The Results
I finished just over 200 miles from my first fitting and must say I am amazed at the results. My average speeds have gone up easily 1.5-2.0 miles per hour and most of the pains I had during 4-5 hour rides are gone. I do have some new complaints, but now they are knit picky ones like: can we move the seat back a millimeter to minimize friction in my sit bones, or adjust my cleats a millimeter to take pressure off one part of my foot so I don't get numbness in my pinky toe after 50 miles of steady riding.
Want some numbers to back up the claims? Last summer, after some extensive training I did a flat course 100.10 mile ride in 5 hours, 54 minutes, at an average speed of 16.9 mph. This past Sunday I did a hilly 100.97 mile ride in 5 hours, 26 minutes, at an average speed of 18.53 miles per hour. What was number 1 complaint/limiting factor in Sunday's ride? My lungs! Everything else I could have pushed hard and faster, and I owe it all to the bike fitting I got at Get a Grip!
Labels: rides, thoughts, training
