What my training has largely taught me is that road cycling is an exercise in humility. One day your legs feel amazing and endless and you find yourself flying up 1500m of elevation. And then the next day, you get passed by a man on a derelict BMX, who’s wearing rubber boots and a backwards helmet.
I was recently reminded of this humility last week, when I took my new MEC Attack (shiny, carbon fibre, great gear ratios, and makes the road feel smooth like butter) in for a fitting and a pre-Fondo tune-up. Just as I had started to think that I was getting the hang of this sport, I learned that my form is off, my seat is too high up and too far back, I tiptoe on my pedals, my hamstrings are so tight it restricts my extension, and my bum is four – FOUR! – inches wider than my saddle. And that’s not even getting into my wheels, which were no longer trued.
See? Humbling.
That said, the information I took home from both my fitting and my tune-up was ride- and form-changing. I’ve since been on two 80km-ish rides and a handful of shorter routes and was floored by the difference. I felt more aware of my on-bike positioning, more comfortable in the saddle, and more confident in the condition of my bike, which left me with nothing but the ride at hand to focus on.
And at a week out from the Fondo, narrowing my focus and making the most out of my last few kilometres is precisely what the doctor ordered.
Getting to the bottom of bike fitting
I was surprised at how interactive of an experience the fitting was. I was instructed to wear shorts or leggings so that the position of my knee could be analyzed, and I would be comfortable pedaling – all of which happened a lot during the fitting. But before I even got on the bike, Simon, my very thorough and knowledgeable fitter, took a slew of measurements. “Having a properly fitted bike is about efficiency and comfort,” educated Simon. “We look for ways to adjust your on-bike position so that the fit of your bike is personalized for maximal performance.” Saddle position, handlebar height, saddle-to-handlebar distance, and saddle-to-pedal distance were just a few of the measurements that Simon noted.
Then it was time for the final measurement: checking the top tube height. In case you don’t get a warning for what’s about to happen on your first bike fitting, it’s a lot like getting your leg measurement taken at the tailor.
With these measurements recorded, Simon asked me to get on the bike so he could do a visual analysis of potential fit issues by simply observing my pedal stroke, on-bike positioning, posture, and leg extension.
No less than 20 seconds into my riding, Simon began his diagnosis, which would inform the tweaks he’d need to make on my bike. “I can see that your back is concave, your arms are overstretched, and you’re tip-toeing on your pedals,” Simon reported, before offering up possible reasons for each. “I think that your hamstrings are likely too tight to allow for your leg to fully extend” – he’s spot-on, as though he and my physio are co-conspirators – “which is causing you to pull up, rather than glide your foot flat along the bottom of your pedal stroke.” The concave back and stretched arms were both symptoms of my seat post being too high, and my bars not being at the right angle.
And then of course, there was my saddle. Erm, or maybe more accurately, my bum.
Simon, seeing that my saddle was in no way supporting my sit bones, recognized it as both an opportunity to increase my on-bike comfort, as well as introduce some colleagues to a new technique he was piloting: sit bone measurement, via tinfoil.
And so, I sat on a piece of tinfoil in front of three very kind and non-judgmental staff members.
After I rose up, Simon took the measurement between the two dips – where my sit bones indented the tinfoil – and proclaimed the distance to be a whopping four inches more than the width of my current saddle.
To take the learnings further, I was asked to get back onto my bike so that the ill-fitted saddle size could be witnessed firsthand. Or maybe so that a different measurement technique could be showcased. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what they did back there. At that point, I think I was reflecting back on a time in my life when having my bum publicly measured wasn’t par for the course. Like I said: A constant lesson in humility.
Despite me hiding it well, I was shocked when Simon showed me the difference in surface area (i.e., support), between the 11.5-inch seat on my bike and the 14-inch one he recommended. I had no idea that in a sport with an entire identity rooted in streamlined, aero features, I was even allowed to dream for a saddle wider than the one I was currently using.
Turns out that not only can I dream it, but MEC sells like, four of them that are in the 14-inch range.
So, once Simon had versed me in saddle sizes, moved my seat forward and dropped my seat post down to accommodate my tight hamstrings and curved back, and rolled my handlebars up to eliminate the excessive arm stretching, he went to work on assessing my leg position. With a ruler that would be the envy of all high school trigonometry teachers, Simon used the markers he’d placed on my hip flexor, ankle, and just below my knee to measure the angle of my leg at the bottom of my pedal stroke. After each measurement, he re-tweaked the seat post height or position. When my hip, knee, and ankle alignment got to the optimal angle on the ruler, Simon knew his measurements had done the job.
Next Simon looked at my cleat placement and foot alignment when clipped in. To optimize efficiency and minimize tip-toeing, cleats should be positioned directly underneath your metatarsals.
Assessing my now far more comfortable riding position, Simon took a final look at my brakes, noting that the levers were just beyond my comfortable reach. He happened to have a stopper in his pocket, which he used to push the brake closer to my hand, so now, when I’m screaming down the other side of the Britannia Beach hill, I can stay in control of myspeed.
A fitting made the Attack feel like a whole new bike. It made it feel like my bike.
Tuning things up for the big ride
Because I’m a road biking rookie, I feel like I need to use this time (when I’m not expected to know anything) as an opportunity to absorb everyone else’s knowledge of the sport. I thought Will Waters, master mechanic at the Vancouver bike shop, would be a good go-to for an overview of what exactly a tune-up before the Fondo could do for my bike.
“Getting your bike tuned before a bike race will identify any safety issues and performance issues,” advises Will. “Following a tune-up, the bike should be faster, shift more efficiently, and brake faster.”
Taking full advantage of my exploratory phase, I wanted worst-case scenarios. What’s the worst that could happen if you headed into a long distance bike race with a non-tuned bike? “Well, wheel rims could be very worn due to friction between the brake pads, which is compounded by grit from the road, and yet the bike will behave perfectly normally,” says Will. “If you continue to ride like this, the rim-braking surface can literally blow apart.” I think Will can tell that I am still quite impressionable, because he’s quick to balance out this worst-case by saying that wheel rims will only wear out over a long period of no maintenance. So in other words, this is not something I need to lay awake worrying about the night before the Fondo.
Since your first tune-up comes free of charge when you buy a bike from MEC, and because I have zero capacity for taking chances, I opted for a pre-Fondo check-up. If you think that your bike might be erring on the ”the wheel rims could explode” side of things, you might want to look closer at MEC’s offering of bike tune-up packages, ranging from basic to overhaul.
Moving over from the fitting room to the bike shop, I found Catalin, bike mechanic pro, who would be doing a full inspection on my bike (these are always free – just wheel your bike up to the shop, a mechanic will look things over and tell you what maintenance they suggest, and it’s up to you to decide what to do about it).
In about 10 minutes, which included the lag time created by me asking questions, Catalin walked around my bike, and checked things like spoke tension and the trueness of my wheels, derailleur and cable tension, the torque on my bearings and headset, my chain wear, and cleaned and re-oiled my chain.
And then he gave me the diagnosis: my gears needed tuning, my wheel needed trueing, and my front wheel needed tightening.
Right? Who would have thought a 4-week old bike would have required so much? Thankfully, Catalin had the time to perform all of the maintenance that afternoon (this isn’t always the case; Will recommends that you book one to two weeks in advance of a major event so that once you and your mechanic have talked about the maintenance your bike requires, you can decide what maintenance you want performed and can leave your bike at the shop for a few days to get the work done).
After the maintenance, Catalin, who also leads Bike Maintenance 101 sessions (a.k.a. 90, very well spent, minutes of your life), mentions that a lot of the things he checked and the simple tweaks he performed are part of the arsenal of info MEC goes over in the maintenance series. Here’s a sample:
– Every few weeks, check your bearings by giving your wheels a side-to-side shake to feel if there’s any play. – Check your headset by applying your front brake and rocking the bike back and forth; if your headset is loose, you’ll feel a knocking sensation.
– Another tip, especially for carbon fibre bikes, is to check the torque on all the bolts, particularly on the steer tube and seat post, because carbon components are very fragile and you don’t want to over-torque because it could crack them. The MEC Bike Shop has torque wrenches that stop at a certain torque setting (for example, the torque on my seat post was so loose, Catalin was surprised I rode on it).
– Get excess grease and oil off your chain by using a rag (any dry piece of cloth will do, and you can reuse it each cleaning) to give the chain a good wipe down. (I’ve started to do this, and it’s incredibly satisfying.) Reason being that the longer that excess grease sits on your chain, the more grit and grime it collects from the road when you’re riding. This will keep your chain, legs, and bike a lot cleaner and you don’t have to use any toxic degreasers. And for these types of wipe downs, it’s OK if you can’t get every kernel of dirt. If it looks clean, you’ve done good work.
– Check your chain wear with a cleverly named tool: the chain wear gauge. It has a curved end that you hook into a chain roller, and put the dipstick-like end into the chain. The lower it goes in, the more worn it is. When it gets to around 0.75 (marked on the dipstick) you should have your chain replaced.
– To properly lube your chain, start at the master pin, which is the flat-looking pin that looks different from every other link, and apply one revolution of oil. And only to the underside of the chain, because that’s the only part that actually contacts the gears. Then give your chain a good spin (you’ll need to flip your bike upside down for this, and will want newspapers underneath you) and wipe off any excess. You don’t want to over apply the oil; just enough to lubricate between the rollers.
– Checking your tires’ trueness is quite simple: spin your tires and look just between the brake pads and your wheel. If it’s shaking, it needs trueing. My front wheel was wobbling a heap.
– Identifying a tire that isn’t true is one thing, fixing it is quite another. “Truing a tire is definitely not something to attempt at home,” says Catalin. “We use a truing stand with calipers, and as you spin the wheel, the caliper touches the wheel to tell you where it’s out. Basically, wherever it scrapes the caliper is where the cable is out and needs tightening. It requires only very fine adjustments. If we want perfection, we get it to 1–2mm of trueness out from the caliper.” 
– You want to be diligent in inflating your tires, but as Will advises, “Don’t over-inflate tires. It’s tempting to inflate them to the maximum recommended pressure to reduce rolling resistance. While this may be true for short distances on very smooth surfaces, overall it’s wise to stick to a pressure near the middle of the recommended pressure. For example, a road tire that can be inflated to 130psi will still roll fast at 90–100psi. In fact, it’ll roll more efficiently as it will deform slightly to match the road surface and this also translates to a more comfortable, less fatiguing ride.”
For the 1.5hrs of my time – an hour for the fitting, half-hour for the maintenance assessment and discussion about what needs doing – the payoff was definitely there. Remember to book in early though – we only have 8 more days until we ride!
***
So this is it. It’s crazy to think that next Saturday, the Fondo will transition from “I wonder if I could?” to “that’s right, just crushed it” (or something close to that, I hope). It has been months of training, of growing stronger, of gaining confidence. We’ve discovered riding partners who have made the miles dissolve, and been supported by our families, who have understood that rides need to be crammed into any available moment.
To everyone who is riding next Saturday: you earned this, best wishes for an amazing ride.
To every partner, family member, friend, etc. who is heading up to Whistler to cheer their rider across the finish line: thank you for every schedule you rearranged, every meal you pushed back, every shoulder massage you’ve given – you’ve made the Fondo possible for us.
See you all at the finish line.
With cycling gusto,
Jess