Bike fit

Or rather an attempt.

I have met one guy at the tri race in August who does bike fitting/bike mechanical stuff/is trying to get into personal training . We were leapfrogging for a while during the race but eventually I pulled ahead:) It turns out that he is also member of the same tri club as I am and he offers pretty good prices for club members so I contacted him about the bike fit. The bike was never fitted for me, just basic stuff when they were trying to figure out the size for me. And then I adjusted the seat height, tilt, back and forth distance and I did my cleats based on what felt the best.

So he came over last night and he measured everything etc and the changes we made are:
Move aerobars 2cm closer together- no really necessary, but it would give me more aerodymanic position
Move my cleats little more back towards the heels – he also used that funny RAID thing or whatever the name for that is to see whether the angle is ok and it seems that I did a good fit for me playing with the angle and finding what feels the best .
Change the tilt of the saddle - which turned out to be a very bad idea. I had it at 9% because that’s the only way I can sit aero on that stupid saddle these days and he changed it to 6%. I did a bike workout this morning and I lasted 10min in aero….But I am getting a new saddle today (Cobb Max) and another one (ISM Adamo racing) in a few days so hopefully I will find something more comfortable. I found pretty good deal on Adamo on Slowtwitch and I think I will be able to sell it easily for the same amount and Cobb has money-back guarantee return policy so it is ok that I own three saddles right now. Well, three for my tri bike. I also own 2 other bikes, plus one more is sitting in my bedroom but that one is not mine (yeah, 4 bikes in my apartment. Luckily I do not have any furniture so it all fits:))

What a waste of time and money that fitting was, don’t you think? But as the saying goes, rather be safe than sorry. I wanted to make sure I am not sitting weirdly or my cleats are not totally off because I not want to end up injured.

He actually told me that he was surprised that I wanted a bike fit because he saw me riding and he thought that my form/fit was perfect and did not need any adjustments. But he also did little test on my core/hip/whatever balance and my right side is pretty weak (my ITB problem side…) so he said that if he had not seen me riding and if I told him that I do not feel comfortable that he would lift the handlebars little bit because with the current position it requires pretty strong core. But I rode in aero for 3h two weeks ago and had zero problems so the position is good.

He also said that my seat height is in the lower end and that I could rise it a bit to open up the knee angle and generate more power. However, I am not doing it until I get my new saddle because I tried to put it higher (because I know that I am way too low) last week and it was painful.

But it was not a complete waste because he adjusted my derailleur because it got little messed up and shifting was not smooth after we changed the cassette to my new wheel few days ago. And he also showed me bunch of new ITB exercises that I did not come across before. So since tomorrow is my last PT session I will have plenty exercises to do on my own now.
And I have all the measurements now so when I take the bike apart to ship it home:( I can assemble it back to where it was.