Another road bike fit question

Better to use the balance trick though

I tend to agree. My test is to ride down the road just touching the drops with forefingers. You shouldn’t be taking too much weight through your arms. Knee over pedal gets you close to that for average morphology and core strength. I also found that saddle too far back and high gives outside knee pain due to illio tibial band friction.

OP is overstretching his arms and will have a sore neck due to hunching. Saddle position comes first, then bars.

Weeksy – I did wonder but a few hours had elapsed and I was rushing and tearing around as usual 😀

My arms arn’t quite as bad as that in motion- I was trying not to roll away.

no way that is a 60cm, have you measured it? centre of BB to top of seat tube or where the top tube meets the seat tube?

i’m 6ft 2 and ride a 57cm and it looks way bigger than that

Unless btwin have really weird sizing it’s not a 60 and looks more likely a 54 than 57 but either way it’s close enough to being the right size not to be effecting your av speed to much.

TBH is difficult to be constructive on the finer details if you can’t work out what size bike you’ve bought.

Just goes to show there will always be a place for good lbs.

There’s so much variation in frame size/measurement that anything less than a full geometry chart is useless. I think one of my bikes is a 56 and I’m only 5’7″,

no way that is a 60cm

Prob not ‘actual’ but as a semi-compact it could be an ‘equivalent’. As above, need a geo chart really.

Triban sizing is very odd, I’ve got a 63 and in reality it’s close to my other 58cm road bikes, I’ve not figured out which bit of it is 63cms

What about the wheels? I’m a similar size and weight to you and on both my road bikes (an alu cube and alu cannondale) I had to tighten spokes as the wheels would flex into the brake pads. Climbing seated and pedalling more smoothly helped but 1/4 turn on the spokes also did the job. Perhaps that’s robbing you of a little speed?

An MTB handpump would never get me to 100 p.s.i either, depending on the pump you might be a fair bit softer than that.

Saddle looks too high for starters. Looks a bit long for you though the bars need to get tilted up a little too.

Sort the above then post a new pic.

Ok, thanks to Decathalons no-nonsense approach and a rapidly couriered 60 from another shop, I took delivery of an actual 60cm Triban 5 this evening. Had a quick play with the fit in the shed and legs are straight when my heels are on the pedals, slightly bent when the balls of my feet are on there. Knees are above the spindle with cranks level and drops are pointing ever so slightly downwards. The levers probably need to go forward slightly but they’re fine for riding on the hoods.

Can’t wait to try it out now. If there’s a break in the showers, I’ll post a piccy….

Cool 😀 Let me know if you fancy a spin sometime.

Will do 😀 Got a footpump for an authentic 100psi too so if I’m still no faster, then there’ll be a spanking new Triban 5 for sale 😉

60cm frame:
(Saddle now 15mm higher than this pic)

I really don’t have my arms as straight when I’m riding, I have no problem maintaining a level back and taking my hands off of the bars yet they look almost locked in the pics.

I’ve been out for a quick 10 miler on it and even with a bona fide 100psi, it still doesn’t go that fast lol
It is a lot lot better than the 57cm one though- much nicer position.

I think my whole system needs re-calibrating to road biking positioning. Hopefully, as I do more miles on it, I’ll get faster. I still reckon on any given day- I’d be faster on my Mtb at the moment.

Not sure why everyone’s tip-toeing around saying what they actually see here, You simply look too fat for a roadbike, stick to mtb or buy a £6k cervelo and full matching lycra. 😉
Walleater’s shop will even lend you one for a large deposit til you bend it.

If you really are as fast on roads on your mtb it’s far more likely you are simply uncomfortable riding a roadbike as fast as it can be pushed and holding back somewhere.

Hmm… Still looks a bit, er, hmm… (Not sure)

You’re right though, it might be worth moving those brake levers down – so the lever is around vertical?

(Your neck will thank you when you take the peak off your helmet)

Agree, I’d move the levers down a bit, but its one of those personal things. Deff. loose the peak though. Don’t give up on it, road bikes are quicker, but more importantly when you get used to it, loads more fun on the road than a mtb.

Thanks ck 😀

I don’t think of myself as fat anymore but I’m certainly not a climber 😉

I’m not holding back at all- in fact, Ina vein attempt to access this mythical 20% advantage a road bike is said to give, I seem to be pushing harder on it than I ever did over the same roads on the Mtb.

To be honest, I only bought it because I like riding on the road and it feels wasteful to be wearing out bearings on a f/s Mtb and I do want to attempt a Sportive or two and have registered for ride London.

It just seems ludicrous to me that this machine designed for this very purpose isn’t actually helping- there must be loads of half crippled people out there riding fashionable road bikes (not saying mine is one of those of course 😉 ) who would be better off on a Mtb or whatever else they fancy?

Anyway, I’m not going to give up, this is a lot comfier than the small one so hopefully I’ll re-train my body over time.

I assume you’re timing a short local road loop from the door for your comparison?
How exactly are you timing these rides?

There’s no way the mtb (assuming off road tyres) is as quick, it’s something you are (or are not) doing efficiently on the roadbike. Whether that be position, fit or something else.
No number of pics of you leaning against a fence is going to help you with this.

On the road you’re basically only fighting against wind resistance,gravity and finding your most efficient position.

Don’t worry though, if you stick with it long enough you’re sure to figure it out at some point.

Now you can get on with that fence.

Are those wheels 700 ? It all looks wrong. I’m describes as looking like a gorilla on a moulton, but you look worse ! I’m not convinced those are 700c wheels…

Garmin 800 measured. I have a local 20 miler that I ride loads for training- average 18.6 on the Scott and a few seconds quicker but still 18.6 on the Triban.

There’s a sporting local 15 mile TT course Hcc201b that I ride occasionally and I managed a 17.8mph in 52min32 on the Scott.
Best go on the Triban is 18.1mph for 51.35 but the wind was slightly more favourable.

I feel like I really drive the pedals up the hills on the Scott, utilising my entire core strength. I try and repeat on the Triban and I can’t really engage with the bike in the same way- the muscles try, the lactic acid builds up but instead of roaring up the hill, the Triban just sucks the life out of me- it’s really annoying 🙂

Kinda makes a little more sense now you’ve gone into more detail over how you ride the mtb, unless you’re a sprinter roadbikes are more efficient once you find a comfortable aero position and you shouldn’t really be using your core so much, as you describe throughout the whole, ride. ever looked at most competitive road racers upper bodies?

Sounds a pretty decent avg to maintain on knobbly mtb tyres (although as you mention TT I’d need to assume not much climbing)
Personally I can’t get within 30sec of my road bike times on a 2.5min climb on a my mtb,

This makes a bit of sense to me. When I got my first roadie I tried to ride it in the same way as my MTB. This meat lots of body movement and grinding with a low cadence. It felt all wrong and I had no confidence in throwing the bike around. In time I learned to sit and spin more fad to work the legs not the core. I also got more used to the handing of the roadie so I could sprint and throw it if I needed to. All this meant that it took a while to get quicker but when I did it felt sooooo much better.

Also keep playing with your position, I suspect in time you’ll end up with your bars a little lower and rotated forward a little more but this is something you can play with now you have the right dive bike!

Hcc201b has 774ft of climbing over 15 miles. A couple of short sharp blasts and a couple of shallow gruelers.

I’ve only ridden my local killer- Streatley Hill, once on the road bike and it was shameful! Lack of gearing saw me grinding up stood up at about 3mph compared to the 6mph I would spin up it on the Mtb.

Basically, I need to train from scratch, soak up some pain and grow some new muscles 😀

To be fair Lunge, I’d made a real effort thus year to increase my cadence a little from a low base, so most of my training was around 90rpm. I used to get accused of riding my Mtb like a road bike 😉

Wheels definitely 700C btw…

Managed to skillfully slot in a dry ride this afternoon and even had glorious sunshine for a few minutes. I took the all new bigger Triban to Streatley Hill to see what it was made of.
The whole ride was frustrating beyond belief. I was as fast as I’ve ever been in most places which isnt too bad considering my training has tailed off to just an hour per week but by god it felt tough going.

Streatley Hill itself was interesting. I felt pretty good at the bottom but despite being in Granny 1 (I must google it to see what it actually is), I soon completely ran out of power. I had to stay stood up or else I was going to grind to a halt. On top of that, the 100psi ice skating blade of a rear tyre kept spinning meaning I had to do a weird crouch to even go anywhere I literally knew I would fall over if I sat back down. To be honest, it makes a mockery of all that ‘us Roadies are all Michelle Ferrari inspired Spinners who whizz everywhere at 120rpm whilst you stupid MTBers grind everywhere like your going backwards’ bollocks because I’d have been spinning up there in Granny 3 with about 15bpm less showing on the HRM if I’d been on the MTB.

Another case in point was my favourite little ‘Drag out of Hermitage’ segment. I averaged 13.1mph up there today, as I have done on my Scott on three other occassions. The difference was though, the times on the Scott, i’d only needed 174bpm yet today it took 184bpm with a 190maximum to get the stupid Triban up there!!

Anyway, to my surprise, I still made it up Streatley hill in my second fastest of the 13 times I’ve ridden it this year which doesnt make sense.
The time I was faster on my Scott (2 months ago as I was peaking for The Beast) I again only needed 174bpm to get up there compared to 185bpm today.

I’m going to keep on with it because it makes sense to put the training miles on that rather than the Scott but I tell ya, these road bikes aint what they’re cracked up to be!!!

Are you sure the 60cm you have been referring to is the frame size and not the wheel size. It looks like you have bought a kids bike

I’m only a couple of miles from “Drag out of Hermitage”, and faffed for ages over bike fit.
Problems with my knees ended up with going to the Specialized Store in Newbury for a bike fit from their tame physio, which worked wonders. If you want to ride sometime to get a second opinion then let me know.

Ajc- lol It is the biggest Triban 5 they sell and according to their calculator- I should be riding a 57!!!!

Thanks Downshift, yeah would be good. Hopefully meeting up with ‘MrBlobby’ too although I tend to only get time to ride at half a days notice over the winter.

Streatley hill probably not the best place to compare road and mtb, it’s rather steep for road bike gearing and most grind up it.

May be able to get out one lunchtime this week for a spin if you are keen.