Originally Posted by
Michael Ar
My shoulder improved enough for me to get out for a 4 mile ride this morning and my usual 12 mile ride this afternoon. I would say the jury is still out on the saddle height change. Not distinctly better or worse. I think tomorrow I'll try moving it back 1 cm and tilting the nose up slightly. That will about put me at the end of my ranges on the saddle without getting a setback seat post.
On the stem question, I noted today and recall it from the past as well, that I ride with my hands about an inch and a half behind the hoods rather than on them. That seems to be my most comfortable position. I would say it was breaking down about 30% hoods, 50% behind the hoods and 20% on the tops. I got a couple of stems earlier this week to try out. One is a Sunshine alloy with a 50 mm reach and the other is a steel mtn bike type. My current Technomic is a 100 mm reach.
The Sunshine can be extended a bit taller than my Technomic. The drawing below is a very rough comparison of the relative bar positions with these two and my current bar with all of them at the max extension line.
Do you think one of these will give me a bar position I prefer? i need to get some new bar tape on hand before I play with them. And on the subject of bar tape and fitting of a different sort, do you think tape the color of my water bottle would look good with this frame color? Semi-serious question.
Thanks,
Michael
First I agree, you do look pretty good on that bike. Before you go too far into changing things, I would suggest two functional checks, not numerical checks.
First, put on your riding shoes or any shoes that you ride in, put your heel on the pedal (either side) so your ankle and knee stack with the pedal spindle, and pedal backwards until your knee is straight. Let your other leg hang down loosely. In this position the target is for your foot to just be in contact with the pedal. Try it with the other foot. Mark the original height of the seatpost. If there was pressure required to get your knee straight, the seat should be eased up until you are just in contact with no pressure. The point of this is to be able to spin without your hips rocking, since for most people this causes your undercarriage to be chafed against the saddle. If I find when my saddle is below this point, my legs do not get enough extension and the soles of my feet feel like I'm trying to drive my feet through the pedal - too much knee pressure. I adjust up or down from this by about a millimeter (yeah, really!) at a time to adjust as time and riding go on.
Second functiional check is fore-aft balance. Sitting on the saddlewith your hands on the hoods or ramps, try to lift your hands just an inch up. If you can do that without falling forward, your saddle fore-aft position is about right. The idea is to raise your hands just a bit above the grips mainly with your leg strength. If you are falling forward, you should be moving the saddle back about ¼ inch at a time. But before you do that, mark or measure and record the tilt (nose up/nose down, and how much). After you have moved the saddle back and set the tilt, revisit the saddle height with the heel on pedal method. If you moved the saddle back, it may need to be lowered a little bit. You should be able to raise your butt a little bit above the saddle without hafalling forward or backward and put your sitbones down on the wide part of the saddle. This plus the hand lift will go a long way toward handling road bumps. I think this is a more precise setting of saddle height and setback than you get with formulas and plumb line measurements.
After this and when you get back on the road, you may still find yourself sliding forward or back as you pedal. I think this is because of gravity, so we have to find a functional balance that keeps you sit bones back where they belong, and does not increase abrasion or pressure on your undercarriage in front of the sit bone contact points. For this adjustment its best to have a two-bolt type of seatpost (like what Velo Orange sells) and adjust in small increments. If you feel abrasion, don't delay in addressing it.