Matt's Retul Bike Fit.

2006 Trek 2200 Road bike with Profile Design clip on aerobars.

In my previous post, I had said I felt confident about my decision to spend the money to do this because of the person that was going to work on my fit. Well he wasn’t going to be doing my fit. Not a big deal. It’s not a problem until it is a problem.

So Elliot Kalmus was in charge of fitting me today. The first order of business was setting the cleats on my shoes. I had told him that my left side seemed alright. So he matched that up on the right side before I even got on the bike. Then we put the bike up on the trainer, attached all the “dots” for the Retul computer and I started to pedal. Before he even started to capture data, he listed off 3 adjustments he could see. Saddle Height was going to go up. Aerobar pad position would be wider and pushed back. The saddle was likely to move forward as well.

Next we captured some data to get a baseline. Once that was done, he started by moving my saddle higher. He’d make a quick measurement using a goniometer. Then we’d spin again and make another capture on the computer and compare the numbers to the “ideal” Tri Bike fit numbers.

It was about this time that I was introduced to John Kameen (I’m pretty sure I got his last name right). He’s the regional sales rep for Cervelo. It didn’t take long to see that this is a guy who really enjoys his job. So now I’ve basically got 2 people helping me dial in my bike fit.

Rather than give you the play by play, I’ll just list some of the things I found interesting.

Bike Cleat positioning. As I mentioned before, I was having a tough time positioning my delta clip on to my right shoe. I just couldn’t seem to figure out how to match the left cleat, which seemed to be comfortable. Here is the trick. Find a level edge with a lip and hang the shoes from the cleats so that the heel is hanging towards the floor. With the shoes hanging side by side, you should be able to eye up or measure the fore/aft position of the cleat. The other thing this allows you to do is see the outward/inward angle the cleat is placing your foot when clipped in. When I stand neutral my toes point away from center as do most people’s. So we put a bit of this into the cleat position.

For aerobar position, we moved the elbow pads wider and back. The bars moved forward and turned in for a more relaxed grip. They now look more like those aerobars that are all one piece in a diamond shape up front.

With all that setup the measured angles were much closer to the “Tri Fit” range. Next it was time to find out how aggressive we could get with my aero position. Which basically meant how low could we go with the bars. With a regular bike fit, I think this is where they would make adjustments and then say “that’s a better angle, how does it feel for you?” Well in my case, so much has changed everything felt strange. Fortunately the Retul software offered them better feedback than I was providing them.

The one measurement that came to their attention was how my knee was tracking during the pedal stroke. Keep in mind this is taking into account whether my knee moves outward or inward during the stroke as well. The numbers showed that I had quite a bit of travel to the outside. Which points to the cleat position again. My cleats were placing my feet too closely to my bike. They set up a laser line to view my foot position compared to my knee position. We adjusted them so that they were tight to the inside of the shoe, moving my shoe/foot further from the bike. The numbers improved significantly. There was also a graphic for this measurement. You could see the shape of every pedal stroke superimposed on top of each other. So you saw how the range of motion tightened up and also that there was much less variation.

This measurement played a part in determining how low I could go with my bars. We kept removing spacers, lowering my position until I would end up moving myself out of position somehow to compensate for the “too low” position. It was pretty incredible because all of the numbers were so repeatable. Meaning once we’d gone too far, we’d back up a step and all the numbers would fall right back into place.

I know I’m accused of writing really long posts but this really is the abbreviated version. We were making adjustments for nearly 3 hours! I can see how you can really spend a ton of time perfecting a setup when you have the right tools.

At one point I mentioned my concern about whether my bike was the right size and my issue of being 5’10 with a 30” inseam (short legs). They said that unless you can’t stand over the top tube the standover height isn’t nearly as important as the top tube length. The height of your fit can be adjusted in a very big way. Whereas you are somewhat limited to how far forward or back they can move you. Yes you can get a long stem but you start running into bike handling issues. That made a ton of sense to me. Place your upper body measurement higher in priority than your standover.

John (Cervelo Rep) then mentioned that when I buy a triathlon bike I’d likely never go back. My build is such that a tri bike would fit me better. He then said gauging by the numbers we just got from the Retul session, that a Cervelo P2 56cm would likely fit me better than a P3. Something about the headstack I believe. My guess is the P3 would be more aggressive aero position? I haven’t looked yet.

If you haven’t guessed, I left feeling like that was money well spent.

Now that I’ve got my fit, I think I’ve got some serious adjusting to do. Enough has changed that I have an odd feeling of being weaker on the bike. They said I’d likely feel settled in after 4-6 rides. (keep in mind that they made big changes).

I’ll let you know how it all feels after I get on the trainer later today.

Edit:

I forgot to mention when working on the adjustment to keep my knee from travelling in odd directions. They got some big tie wraps and pulled the front part of my Adamo ISM saddle a bit more closely together.