Last Tuesday I went and spent a couple of hours with Chris Ball at Apex Bike Fitting.  Those who attended our annual dinner in January will remember he was our guest of honour.  I found the experience very enlightening and worthwhile.  Chris’s mechanism for bike fitting involves spending about 45mins pedalling (on his BioBike) at a constant cadence while he electronically adjusts the bike frame and notes the impact on heart rate.

Chris initially sets the BioBike up the same as your own bike, so you need to take that along. Whilst riding I could feel the bike change shape but was never totally sure what changed.  Some of the changes made the perceived effort harder or easier.  At one point it became so much easier I through the resistance had been reduced.

The end results based on his tests was that by lowering the saddle by 1cm, raising the front bars by about 7cm and possibly shortening the frame by 2cm I could obtain a 7-8% efficiency improvement based on HR rate.  The end position on the BioBike definitely felt much better and easier to pedal.

My saddle is now down and the bars have been raised by 3cm by twisting the stem over and assuming I don’t overdo the commuting today and tomorrow, hope to be quicker on H10/2 on Thursday evening.  The potential down side might be worse aerodynamics, but I will have to see what happens.  Over the weekend I looked at Garmin teams TT positions (lots of pictures on their web site) in the Giro individual TT.  Some have their fronts set very low with other pretty high.

If you are looking to spend money on a TT bike I feel it’s a wise investment of £200 for club members.

Andrew Payne