John Cobb’s comments on Bike position

My last post shows a video of me on my bike with the new saddle. The new saddle I bought is John Cobb’s V-flow Plus saddle. I am planning to do a detailed write-up of how I like the saddle after I build to a 65 mile ride on it. My old saddle caused so much pain that it practically brought me to tears on 60+ mile rides. So, I figure 65 miles will be a real benchmark test for me and the new saddle!

It will probably be in a couple of weeks before I can do a long ride, due to crappy weather in NC 🙁 I am playing it smart and building the mileage slowly on the new saddle! So far so good, and I am liking the saddle. I am really quite pleased that my butt did not hurt after the 1 hour trainer ride. Trainer rides are usually extremely uncomfortable!

When I purchased the saddle, John Cobb told me to send a picture of me on it, so he could look at my position. I asked him to look at the video, and here are his comments. He is an expert bike fitter, by the way! See this article about bike fit. Correction: Fellow blogger and USAT Coach, Mark McDonnell, left a comment noting that John Cobb is more than an “expert bike fitter”…he is one of the top bike fitters in the world! Oops, my bad!

Here are John Cobb’s comments about my bike position, reprinted with permission…

After I watched the video, if the seat felt half way good I’d consider that great, you were working pretty hard. But, while watching the video I noticed a couple of things for you to consider. I think you have a leg length difference on the bike, the right leg is over extending it looks to me. I would cure this by putting in a couple of cleat wedges on the right shoe with one of the two reversed so it acted like a spacer. I would also strongly suggest that you switch to some shorter cranks, I would use a 165mm length at a maximum. I thought that your bar setup was about right for Ironman racing. I think you will continue to like the seat but your overall saddle height is about 1cm too high and you are scrubbing on the saddle under load, this always leads to seat issues.
Thanks for the report and I appreciate your trying the seat.

Good stuff, and more for me to think about…

• I will definitely try moving the seat down 1 cm. That is an easy and free change, and I do see my butt moving around too much when I am pushing hard.
• I will think about the cranks, as that costs money, which is in short supply at the moment!
• I do have an extra set of cleats, so could try the spacer idea, too. I will note that I went to a chiropractor once for hip pain, and he checked for leg length discrepancy, and found my legs to be the same. So…, not sure about that idea?? Maybe there’s more involved than just leg length to consider with a discrepancy on spinning on the bike, such as flexibility? I am tighter on my right IT band…and have not done yoga or any stretching at all in over a month. Bad girl!

Another Correction: My friend Ginger, a massage therapist, sent me an email saying she was once fitted by John Cobb. She said “It could be that your legs are the same length but at the present time you may have some discrepancy from a tight psoas muscle or need an adjustment in your SI joint(s).” She recommended I do both the spacer and some stretching! She said her hip pain improved when she added a spacer as per John’s recommendations.

One more note: I did some research on crank size. I learned that a crank too long for your femur causes you to apply too much power to the cranks. A shorter crank will help you spin at a higher cadence. Hmmmm….didn’t I just say that grinding hard gears was one of my shortcomings?