Here is the presentation…
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Looking at the pic of you on the bike, it’s way short for you, your back is nowhere near flat and your elbows are too bent IMO for the position you are in.
Either a longer stem or a longer frame is what you need IMO. You need to get longer, which will also bring you a bit lower, but you loom cramped on there regardless of how comfortable you think it is (and it very well may be)
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I’m going to start with a longer stem, I think this will be a good first step, but realize it might not solve anything and a new frame is what I actually need. The good news is that I make good power on this bike, but it’s coming at an aero penalty, which is bad news.
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Lots of guys think that the only use of a power meter is to train to get more power. That’s why they bought a power meter, and it’s always a good goal – but you can also use a power meter to help you target and then decrease your drag. That’s your situation. You may be producing good power but you’re a parachute dragging around an anchor.
More power and less drag. You can do both. That’s allowed. The stop watch and finish line don’t care which you used to get faster.
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As a point of comparison here’s me in a low position on the hoods: notice how my elbows are not at 90* but more “open” and back is flat. What’s happening for you is your whole back is curling up to make up for the shorter frame
This is with a 100mm stem
I upsized to a 110 to flatten my back more
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I fully understand. Hence this thread. Thanks for the input thus far, I’ve got some good takeaways and things to work on.
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Possibly a daft question - are you the Robert Chung who came up with the Chung Method? Assuming you are, then @anthonylane - listen to what this guy says…
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Not so daft. Sometimes I’m a little surprised, too.
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What size is your front chainring? If you’re goal is a flat hundo sub-five…it makes good sense to pick the largest front chainring you can and then use a larger cog on the cassette to find your best gear ratio at an optimal chainline. That will buy you a couple watts. Every little bit helps.
I agree that your bike is too small…but the bike you have is the bike you have. It could still be way more aero w/o opening up the checkbook to buy a new bike.
42t single with 11-32 out back.
Yeah, agreed. I have a new MTB arriving today so the bike budget has been blown already this year.
That looks much better than I do, I reckon I’d need another 30-50mm to get that low. A custom frame would be awesome, but that’s not happening anytime soon as I don’t have $2K+ to drop. I just need to see who makes the largest off the shelve gravel frameset and do some size comparisons to my current bike.
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I think gravel frames are going to be a bit more relaxed generally than my race oriented road bike. My friend in this photo is also 6’4” and on a 61cm. I think you can easily and safely run a 140mm stem and get a lot more comfortable, when I was hunched over like you are before I started going longer I had lower back pain towards the end of a long ride.
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Don’t mean to hijack, but hopefully this is germane to the broader topic. I did my century yesterday and I averaged 227w/NP 233 for speed of 20.2mph. I used an app called windsock, which plugs into strava, and got the following weather metric
Headwind: 51% @ 8.4-11.3mph
Longest Headwind: 01h 2m 34s
Air Speed: 20.3mph
I’m not really versed in looking at wind data, so not sure how much this impacted me. With the way the course is, it makes sense half would be a headwind, it’s a lot of north/south type stuff so maybe an east/west cross wind would different
Based on bestbikesplit, it had estimated last year that over the same course, doing a power of 218 would get me under 5hrs, so fortunately I got a bit more power to accomplish this goal. I did have shaved legs and a lazer bullet aero helmet, but otherwise non-aero and I’m not sure how much my positioning on the bike made me less aero. Anyhow, just thought I’d throw this into the whole topic of being aero/faster
I would not recommend doing any size comparisons to your current bike. Other than ensuring the next bike will be “bigger”, there is little value in it.
Start with a blank slate and get fitted, first. Then try and find a bike that fits your needs. Don’t force your fit onto a preselected bike geometry.
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@anthonylane I skimmed the tread. New mountain bike coming. I get you’re not wanting to spend too much money on another new bike, but, understand many of us have either experienced injury trying to make either too big or too small work. Or have seen someone get injured doing the same.
The time and money working to overcome an injury (could) pale in comparison to just buying the right whip now.
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I guess we have to agree to disagree. In my opinion (fair enough that you have a different one) your friend can do an easy spin and go faster because he is a stronger rider than the average rider of your group ride - not because he is ‘naturally more optimized for solo speed’.
Since I neither know you nor your friend let me make an example with riders from the pro peloton: Egan Bernal (1.75cm, ca. 60kg) and Filippo Ganna (1.93cm, ca. 82kg) - both have probably a FTP around 6-6.5w/kg. According to your logic, Egan Bernal is 'naturally more optimized for solo speed (smaller, lighter). Especially on the flat, he stands no chance against the bigger rider (Ganna) because the bigger rider can just produce more absolute power. Weight doesn’t matter much on the flat and the aero disadvantage of the bigger rider is more than compensated by the higher power output.
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Good points. Thankfully I’ve logged over 10,000mi on this current setup and I’m injury free. While the bike fits small, I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily the the wrong size, but the fit just isn’t optimized. I’m definitely keeping my eyes peeled on a “new” frameset. They are just really hard to come by now, as you probably know.
I just don’t have the funds at the moment to invest in a $300 fit and then chase the ideal frame.
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It’s just the difference of comparing FTP (which is NOT W/kg) to power to weight ratio (W/kg).
If you compare to riders on the flats have similar FTP, of course the more aero rider is faster. If you compare by W/kg, then you’re right that the bigger rider is probably faster, but only if so is similar.
Neither is conclusive if you don’t evaluate all factors.
Picture tells a thousand words, so definitely post more and we can help further
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Will do, appreciate the input. It’s always nice to see other folk’s position as a reference. And thanks to all that have offered their insight, it’s truly helpful.
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