Bike fit with Terra Cycling

Since donning the lycra as a roadie over 10 years ago, I had always been recommended a bike fit. However, opportunity and a degree of scepticism had prevented me from actually doing it. Was it worth it? Would I see any benefit? A detailed assessment of my body geometry on a bike was terra incognita to me.

The self reflection offered by lockdown in 2020 finally saw me bite the bullet and commit to a professional bike fit. After some research I came across Adam of Terra Cycling (formerly The Fitting Room) in Cranleigh in the Surrey Hills. I was drawn in by the clean lines of the website that spoke to my principal interests of road and gravel cycling. After a helpful chat over the phone I booked in my bike fit session for the following week.

Arriving for the fit session I was greeted with a warm welcome from Adam and bike mechanic Chris of sister venture The Fettling Room. The newly renovated premises includes a café and I gladly took up the offer of a hot flat white coffee whilst getting settled in. The site of The Fitting Room was previously a dressmakers shop and so the name was quite apt!

The session started with an amiable chat about my cycling history and a discussion of future cycling ambitions. I explained to Adam that my cycling goals included riding the postponed Etape and doing more gravel / bikepacking adventures. We then moved onto a review of any physical issues including past injuries, broken bones etc. Thankfully the list of such issues was very short.

After changing into my cycling gear, we began the flexibility assessment that included a number of dynamic stretches to test my range of motion. Years of sporting activity across various ball sports and endurance activities meant that I was lucky to have a good degree of flexibility.

Next up was the start of the staged biomechanical assessment that Adam referred to the ‘kinetic chain’:

Saddle - We started off with an initial view of how I was set up on the bike. We soon realised that my saddle was too far back and too high. We lowered the saddle and brought it forward on the rails.
Shoes - We identified that a robust inner sole would help with my high arches and prevent my feet and therefore knees from rolling inwards. We also slightly altered the cleat position on the shoes bringing these slightly backwards (I use SPD-SL cleats on the road bike and SPD cleats on the gravel bike).
Handlebars – With the shift in the saddle position, we naturally had to adjust the handlebars to ensure a good 90 degree angle between body and outstretched forearms. We changed the stem and adjusted the hoods so that the shifters were now lower. The end result was that taking up any position, whether on the hoods, on the drops or up top would be comfortable and within reach.

After this comprehensive review including video analysis and a laser line assessment, we finally had an optimal position for the road bike. Adam explained that the new position was quite radically different from the riding position that I had adopted previously so that there would be a bedding in period. Some shorter rides were suggested rather than launching into any 100 miler rides.

We thereafter made some tweaks to the gravel bike applying some subtle changes to the saddle position and re-used the stem from the original road bike set up. The intention was to maintain a similar but slightly more relaxed geometry to be able to cope with the rough stuff typically encountered on a gravel ride.

By now, it was well into the evening and our session had overrun but we had made really good progress on the bike fit. We had also discussed Adam’s latest project in designing and running the ‘Glorious Gravel’ series of UK rides and I did not hesitate to take up his offer to participating in one of the upcoming events as guest. I left the session late for dinner at home but thoroughly converted to the mantra that a proper bike fit can make you more comfortable and (hopefully) even faster on the bike.

The following day Adam sent across by email the fit summary with his findings plus all my measurements. I promised to keep in touch and let him know how the first few rides go on both the gravel and road bike.

Highlights