Day 15: Pro Bike Fitting Part 2

Remember how I said I might be meeting with Kirk again on Sunday (today) to finish up my fitting? Well, we got in touch and decided to meet early in the morning before my plane at around 3:30pm. I was excited that he was so willing to take the time out of his day to meet up with me especially the day after Christmas. So, now that I was comfortably fit to by Trek it was time to focus on power and efficiency.

So, he set my bike and I up on the trainer to get me ready to spin so that we could check out the power I was giving out and how to maximize it as much as possible. After about an hour of looking over numbers and changing things such as my pedal stroke and arm placement, Kirk was confident that I was at the point that I needed to be.

However, there were a lot of things that I needed to practice on the trainer now before I would be completely efficient and ready to maximize my power during actual rides and races. Kirk told me I needed to focus on not letting the bottom of my feet press against my shoe beds as I pedaled. This is really quite hard and exhausting to do if you’re not used to it and it’s going to take a lot of practicing before I master it. He also told me about my arm placement and that using your arms as little as possible is really the goal when you’re riding. It made sense after he explained it to me. The sustenance you put into your body is your energy for that period of time and you want to use it as wisely as possible. If you are straining your arms the whole time on a 3 or 4 hour ride then that is A LOT of energy you are giving to your arms and essentially, energy that you are just wasting when you should be using it on your legs and core which are going to be working the most on a long, hard ride.

At one point during the fit, when my arms and hands were perfectly placed and were relaxed and the bottoms of my feet were not hitting up against the foot beds of my shoes, my power was perfectly and evenly distributed on the bike and I really was finally getting the most out of my Trek. I won’t be getting a list of power stats from this session but I will once I begin racing in the 2011 RR Season. The more practice I do with this now the more efficient I’m going to get and the better I am going to get as a rider. 2011 competition, come mid February…watch out.