Have I reasonable expectations? & difference between OCR3 and TCR alliance

irlforum

hynesie wrote: »

But what did the shop recommend?
It's not clear from the post what the shop has suggested vs what irlforum's opinions are.

Well he was saying large but wasn't able to give me a reason as to the cause of my back pain. I think the only reason though he was adamant about large is because I said that the XL felt really big - I didn't necessarily mean "too big" by that though when I said it. I suppose I would have liked him to tell me what I should be feeling on the bike or what to concentrate on to to feel right.

I remember the pro I was talking to before showed me some horizontal way to hold your arm against the saddle to get correct length of top of frame but the sales man here did not do that. (I can't remember the trick now myself) I dunno if he is really an expert in bike fitting.

I took a while and I really had to push before he thought of suggesting changing a front piece to extend the length of the handlebars. And when he did think of it he showed me the part but he didn't suggest fitting it - should he have?

blorg

irlforum wrote: »

What do you think? It's this size or a little more that the seat is above the handlerbars. Is this normal enough?

The smaller the frame the lower the bars compared to the seat, yes. The bars generally should be below the seat on a road bike. It looks particularly dramatic on Giants as they have a "compact geometry" frame with a sloping top tube- so you have quite a bit of seat tube showing. The two bikes you linked look perfectly normal.

To give you a very rough rule of thumb I am 6ft, 33.75" inside leg and ride a L in Giant. You would probably want to be a fair bit bigger than that to fit a XL. How tall are you?

You need to ride the bikes as you have done but good idea to have some sort of notion of what is normal, as if you are not used to riding a road bike it can be difficult to really know from a test ride what size will end up suiting you.

The pro is right in that you should ride with your elbows bent; this absorbs road shock and so on, but it is a bit of an acquired skill requiring flexibility and you may not be comfortable doing it from the get go; I know I certainly wasn't.

Worth bearing in mind with all of this that your flexibility may change so while you need something that fits now you may want the bars lower in the future. The "front bit" is called a stem and this can be got in different lengths and angles to position the bars differently- you can also have it flipped up or down to raise or lower the bars. There are also spacers under the stem which give you another 40mm or so of adjustment up and down.

irlforum

blorg wrote: »

The smaller the frame the lower the bars compared to the seat, yes. The bars generally should be below the seat on a road bike. It looks particularly dramatic on Giants as they have a "compact geometry" frame with a sloping top tube- so you have quite a bit of seat tube showing. The two bikes you linked look perfectly normal.

To give you a very rough rule of thumb I am 6ft, 33.75" inside leg and ride a L in Giant. You would probably want to be a fair bit bigger than that to fit a XL. How tall are you?

You need to ride the bikes as you have done but good idea to have some sort of notion of what is normal, as if you are not used to riding a road bike it can be difficult to really know from a test ride what size will end up suiting you.

The pro is right in that you should ride with your elbows bent; this absorbs road shock and so on, but it is a bit of an acquired skill requiring flexibility and you may not be comfortable doing it from the get go; I know I certainly wasn't.

Worth bearing in mind with all of this that your flexibility may change so while you need something that fits now you may want the bars lower in the future. The "front bit" is called a stem and this can be got in different lengths and angles to position the bars differently- you can also have it flipped up or down to raise or lower the bars. There are also spacers under the stem which give you another 40mm or so of adjustment up and down.

I'm going to measure myself this evening now and let you know. How do you measure your inside leg - knee right up is it?

Actually I'm just after noticing there that my ar*e is actually sore at the moment and I was only cycling for about 10 or 15mins testing bikes out yesterday. I remember this being a problem on my old bike aswell and it made long spins really uncomfortable. I'd have to keep lifting up off the saddle for relief towards the end of these spins. Is this normal? I did mention to the salesman in store yesterday that I found the saddle uncomfortable but he didn't say anything.

irlforum

Ok measured myself. I'm about 6ft 2".

Lumen

irlforum wrote: »

Ok measured myself. I'm about 6ft 2".

You're probably between sizes.

irlforum

Lumen wrote: »

You're probably between sizes.

Frigged then basically.

Lumen

irlforum wrote: »

Frigged then basically.

No, it means you have choice.