Bike Fit with Experienced Ironman

There are not many triathletes around Nashville who have more experienced than Rob Allison. He has been racing for almost 20 years. After numerous attempts and two very close misses at qualifying for Hawaii Ironman--2 times he was less than a minute back--he finally nabbed a Kona Qualifier ("KQ") spot at Ironman Florida last fall.

Another thing about Rob that you should know is that he likes the best of anything he uses. He doesn't waste time with "bargain" gear. For instance he has a fully pimped-out flagship Scott Plasma that he built himself, complete with Powertap and Zipp Vuka aerobars. However something was missing. Despite a close reading of everything that slowtwitch.com has posted on fitting, he still had a nagging feeling that the bike did not fit him correctly. The Vuka bars, while very light and aero, are not very adjustable.


Photo: Rob.

In the first clip below you can see Rob's position on his tri bike. There are a couple of areas that do not look quite right: his arms appear a little too stretched out, his back is too curved, and his pedal-stroke looks cramped. He is figeting on the saddle. He is not completely comfortable.

Compare before and after, you can play both at the same time:


Rob before fitting.



Rob after fitting.

I knew that Rob was close but had some room to improve. You can see in the post-fitting picture below that Rob's back is flatter, his hips are more open, and his shoulders are correctly aligned over the aeorbar arm-rest pads. Surprisingly, even though he originally felt (and looked) too stretched out, we actually adjusted the aerobars 1 cm forward.

Rob reported that the new position was more comfortable than his previous position. Note, that the previous position was the position that he qualified for Kona on. We know that the new position is easier to generate power because we did the fitting on a Computrainer. We also made a couple of tiny adjustments to his Speedplay cleat positions, including putting a valgus-shim in one shoe.

Here is Rob's write-up of the fitting. And I was not the first person he asked for help with his fitting.....

ST-

Thanks for the time and effort and all of the advice yesterday while fitting me on my bike. I was really excited to meet and go over bike dynamics and fit for me. It has been a long long time since I have taken the time to meet with anyone to go over that aspect of my triathlon training and given the amount of time spent on the bike, I see it as very valuable for me.

As you know, I have been competing in triathlon since 1991 and have raced at every distance all over the world. I have trained with many pros and have even coached, but never have I been able to amass the specific information that you have regarding the bike fit. I enjoyed talking about the specifics of the bike fit for me and I am amazed at how the subtle changes we made felt so natural. Now that I have qualified to go to Hawaii to race in the Ironman World Championships 2010, I feel that I will have a better start to the season and the ability to be faster on my bike.

With a full time job and with the desire to get faster, I believe that your knowledge, the use of the power meter, camera, and angle measuring tools all led to a better overall fitting for me on my bike. Today, I am amazed at the difficulty in choosing a bike that fits and how your measurements and advice made that process so much easier. I was impressed that even my cleat placement was scrutinized by you.

Thanks again for the fitting and the advice for this season. I look forward to following up with you in a few months to see how it has all come together for me.

Rob Allison