Bike fitting for fun and profit

It's great having your own bike to ride around NYC. By far the biggest benefit is that you're familiar with all the quirks and unique traits of your own bike. When I rode the school bikes they had a fun way of revealing their idiosyncrasies in inconvenient places. For example, a little red comfort bike with a low step through frame had a tendency to drift left at higher speeds. Inconveniently, I found out while coasting down the Manhattan Bridge. Another had a funny boom-thomp sound that only happened when riding over bumps and gravel. A third one (bearing NYU's trademark violet and white colors) had a seat that suddenly sinks down like an escalator in the middle of gridlock. Each one was a little scary in its own way and I guess that's all part of the fun. Granted not paying a dime (except tuition) to borrow the bike is great, but after enough of these quirks I bet more than one student decided to get their own bike to avoid any more nasty surprises (even a wheel that suddenly pops off might only do that on gravel, so you'd know what to expect if you were on gravel).

When you buy an older bike be prepared to invest as much money in fixing it up as you do in buying it. There is also the issue of getting fit for the bike. I spent only $175 to buy the bike and my local bike shops want to charge $100 just for a fit assessment...perhaps next semester when I get more student loans (sigh). Being cash-strapped does do something to you though--it makes you a far more resourceful person (this works out since you also have a little more free time). I started reading everything I could about fit and bicycles. While a bike fitter has many modern techniques (and computers) to estimate the size of the bike you need, in the end the best (and only real) way to know if the bike is a good fit is to ride it.

I took my Miyata out for many spins and put about 30 miles on it before deciding on a number of things:

• the top tube is too long
• the seat tube may be a little too long but no biggie
• the brakes levers are stiff and difficult to squeeze
• the brake levers are too far away from me
• the drop handlebars are the right width but have a 120 cm reach, which puts the levers far away
• the saddle is too narrow
• I didn't check carefully inside the shipment box where the beautiful original steel pedals were wrapped in brown paper and instead put on a set of ugly black pedals by accident - Fixed.
• the bike needs to be made "legal" with a headlight, tail light, and bell - Fixed

Before going into the nitty gritty here's some basics: a bike's "frame size" is the distance from the very bottom of the seat tube (called the bottom bracket) to the top of the tube. Nowadays, the measurement seems to be taken from the center of the bottom bracket to the center of the top bracket of the seat tube. The bracket is the place where all the tubes join together.

Parts of a bike frame.

The problem with the top tube is something a lot of women are going to encounter. Diamond-shaped road bikes frames made before the 1990s were, as a rule, made for men (bikes made for women all featured a step-through frame). While there was no standardization of frame sizes like today, the diamond frames were designed for male bodies in mind. While a woman with a longer torso might feel very comfortable on one of these bikes, most women are going to find that the only way they can ride these bikes comfortably is to get a frame with a shorter seat tube (so, if online bike calculators tell you "50 cm", you'll want to go down to 49 or 48 cm for 1980s and older diamond frame road bikes). A smaller frame will have a shorter top tube to accomodate shorter torsos.

If you ride a bike with a top tube that's too long for you, a number of problems arise. One is that you'll feel "stretched out" on the bike. It may be hard to reach the brake levers, which makes it dangerous to ride the bike. If this is your first road bike or the first time that you've ridden one in many years, a slightly long reach might not be a problem since with frequent riding (especially on longer rides) you'll eventually feel more comfortable with a slightly too-long top tube than a slightly too-short one (this is true for both women and men). On my Miyata the seat tube is 51 cm (center-to-center) and top tube is 52 cm. This sizing is bizarre since the top tube seems to be too short for the average man who rides a 51 cm road bike. But odd sizing was a frequent event in the old days of bike manufacturing even within a company itself. While my Miyata has a 51 cm seat tube and 52 cm top tube, there is a 610 Miyata on eBay at this moment with a 48 cm seat tube and 52 cm top tube. Sizing was all over the place in the old days.

The Miyata I bought was in fact previously owned by an older woman (85 years-old) who broke her collar bone riding a mountain bike. Her very concerned son decided to put up her entire bike collection on eBay to avoid another mishap. It was a stroke of luck to find a 1982 men's road bike with such woman-friendly dimensions though it ended up that the top tube is still just too long for me. Going through growing pains with this bike was not easy and at one point I wanted to sell it and get a slightly smaller bike. But after checking around on eBay I found that most 49 or 48 cm vintage road bikes have 52 cm top tubes. And a bike any smaller than 48 cm is going to look like a kid's bike on me! I thought of getting a different type of bike (e.g., hybrid, comfort, cruiser), but in a city like this, it seems like only delivery guys ride hybrids, messengers ride fixies, hipsters will ride anything vintage, fixie, or weird (tandem bike), wannabe racers ride Cervelos, and Manhattanite yuppies ride Italian cruisers. The last was entertaining to see because the man wearing the business suit had to pedal very hard and fast to avoid an oncoming taxi. All that sweat must have ruined his expensive suit. I look forward to the day that NYC starts imposing some Zona Traffico Limitato zones and give pedestrians and bicyclists a break! Buses, trains, and pedicabs are more than enough to shuttle people around.

It might have made more sense to buy a modern road bike with a diamond frame designed for women, but the only constraint is price--they don't come cheap and even the lowest end Specialized women's road bike starts at $700. Not an option for most students.

So, some last words on the bike fit problems. The way I approached adjusting the bike to fit me was to (1) get a handlebar with a shorter reach, (2) get a shorter stem. The current handlebar reach is 120 mm, which tells me the previous owner had arms and legs longer than mine! I found a handlebar with a 95 mm reach that fit me on eBay. Also on eBay I found a 50 mm stem (current one is 60 mm). I bought it on impulse because my neck and back pain were getting really bad due to the excessive reach on the bike, but based on all the advice in bike forums, 90 mm is really the shortest you should go on a road bike without compromising safety and stability at higher speeds. Oh well.

Finally, the saddle. This might deserve its own post but I don't really want to rehash the hellish experience of trying to find something that doesn't constantly punish your derriere. Let's just say there's a reason why Brooks saddles work for so many people and the reason is that it hurts less than the competition for most of us.