Had a chat with a bike fitter today. Not a fitting, mind you, but a chat when we were both stopped to let a dog walker with a ton of dogs clear off a trail. I mentioned that I have really wonky femurs (super-short for my height—enough to limit my inseam to 30” at 5’10, despite being proportional from the knee down) that have forced me to run short (165mm) cranks and favor some combination of zero offset / steep seat tubes / forward saddle slam. Multiple bike fitters have suggested custom frames (will do so as soon as I can afford it with sloping top tubes (for a bit of standover easing), a 74ish degree seat tube, etc.
My current bike isn’t bad. Lynskey Sportive ML, 73 degree seat tube, zero offset, 165 cranks, etc. My knees thank me (used to have crazy pain after 20 miles when I was overextending, and now I can do 200), BUT, as with almost every bike, I always feel like I’m going to endo in the drops when I’m descending. Always. And I always find myself acting like I’m downhilling on a MTB, feeling way more stable hanging off the back and holding the hoods. I feel a little squirrely in the drops on flat ground, and actually pretty great in them when I’m going uphill (if I happen to grab them to change it up).
On the other hand, I feel super-good descending on any old MTB with any old flat bars—Jones, butterfly, traditional, etc.
I’ve been trying and trying for years to work on my balance issues, even going so far as to start track riding (though not a lot of downhill in a velodrome…). I’ve also tried all sorts of different stems, bar heights, top tube lengths--all the usual tweaks. I still feel like I’m going over the bars when I nose down even a teeny hill. I'm dreading
RAMROD this year--not because of the climbing (that's the fun part, and that's just legs and lungs, which I can build), but because on the way down, I'll either be twitchy, nervous, and riding my brakes or I'll be straight up and down like a wind sail.
I mentioned this to the random bike fitter not he trail today and he says “Well, yeah. You need to get up on that bottom bracket because of your femurs, but you have a gorilla torso that’s throwing all sorts of weight forward, even when you’re on the hoods.”
Him: “Mountain bikes with slack-assed head tubes feel good, right?”
Me: “Right”
Him: “And gravel bikes with kinda slack head tubes feel better, too?”
Me: “A little, but unless the drops are super, super shallow, I still won’t use them, and they never feel GOOD when I'm descending."
Him: “If you really WANT drops and you aren’t going to be racing, look into some high-stack sub-70 degree head tube bikes like a Sutra to get your weight more balanced—or anything else that throws the wheel way the off out in front of you so you aren't totally throwing off the bike's balance."
Me: “Makes sense. Probably why I liked my low-trail Rawland?”
Him: “Yeah. Same deal. Like pushing a shopping cart.
“
Me: Thanks!
Him: "Any time. Also, stay away from crits.
"
It sounds so simple that I want to believe it. Could my balance issues when descending (which don’t exist on a hardtail) just be because I’m tossing my weight so far forward because of my short femurs?