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In the Feb-Mar 2010 of CTC’s Cycle magazine there is an interesting article by bike designer Mike Burrows on the myths of getting the right fit and position on the bike.

Mike Burrows designed the Lotus track bike that Chris Boardman used to win gold in the pursuit at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. He also  invented the compact frame with the Giant TCR.

He makes the point that frame size is not generally an issue as most professionals are happy racing on off the peg machines and that the fastest upright bicycles ever built (his monocoques) were only built in one size.

Mike says in the article that the most important dimension is saddle height, and he is pretty scathing on KOPS rubbish as he calls it, that is knee over pedal spindle when the crank is forward, saying it is more appropriate to the Da Vinci Code.

He does advocate having the saddle as high as possible, the simple way to measure this is by placing the arch of your foot on the pedal with the cranks in line with the seat tube, you leg should then be straight.

So long as you can get the contact points at the correct distance from each other does it matter what is in the middle connecting them all together?

Well, from one point of view I don’t want to ride a bike that looks like it belongs to my Dad or one that looks like it’s stolen from a kid. But as long as I can get the correct position on the bike using saddle height, stack height on the handlebars, length of the stem,  do I really care whether the frame is off the peg or custom made and custom sized to fit me exactly, well not really, no.

And if you have a bike custom built, do you have to find someone with your exact dimensions when you want to sell it?

In the current edition of Cycling Weekly (Thursday February 4^th 2010) there is an extensive Bike Fitting special that says the exact opposite.

With all this conflicting advise on just about every subject possible to do with cycling and training who are we supposed to believe?

I can’t help being drawn to the simplicity of the case presented by Mike Burrows as it justifies my lack of action in getting my position correct on any one bike, never mind all of them. It doesn’t matter all that much except to all those people who are trying to make a living from convincing us that it matters enormously.