Iron Jack

I have a brand new bike.

Well, practically a brand new bike and it certainly feels like a brand new bike to me.

I have…new seat…new handlebars…new stem thing…new RED handlebar tape…and a new setup, done by video analysis to ensure its the perfect setup for me. This is all to go with my incredibly cool and sexy new silver and pink Specialised shoes.

In short, the mighty red and black Specialised bike rocks. And its all thanks to the awesome team at Cyclezone in Rotorua, who literally haven’t rested until the bike was sorted.

It started with me visiting the shop to get new cleats and pedals. My old ones had just about worn through, so on Coach’s instructions, it was off to the shop to get new ones. In the course of getting the new cleats and pedals, a lengthy discussion ensued about how much I hate the bike, how uncomfortable and sore I get, how numb my feet get, about how my bottom gets sore and gives up well before my legs do. I just thought these were all things that, as an amateur cyclist, I just had to live with.

Well, it turns out you don’t. To be fair, it was probably the first time I had really voiced my concerns about the bike and how fed up I was with the bike. I think I knew that I was reaching a real crunch point. I couldn’t stand to spend any more than two hours on it - yet I knew that for the Ironman I would need to spend around seven hours on the bike and complete a 180km bike course. The thought of that scared the living daylights out of me.

So perhaps it was desperation, but I’m really glad we had that conversation!

The Cyclezone team have now been tweaking things for a few weeks - literally a bit here and a bit there. It started with the shoes - my old ones were way too flat - so they got sold on Trade Me and the sexy silvers ones started gracing my wind trainer. Then we trialled a new seat. After an agonising spin session sitting on my nerves we figured that wasn’t the one for me! Then this week I booked in for a lengthy video analysis session to tackle as much as could without getting a whole new bike.

“The bike’s actually too big for you,” says Bryce, owner of Cyclezone.

“Really?” That’s the first time anyone had said that!

A quick measure agreed with Bryce’s view and then the video analysis triple confirmed it.

That’s when the real work started - I’m sure all the pieces of the old handlebars on the floor just made it look worse than what it was! A shorter bike stem and new handlebars reduced the length of the bike by about 4cm - or at least I think that’s what they said! We trialled a new seat and raised the height significantly.

I jumped on again to check the angles. It felt like a completely different bike. I still can’t quite get over the difference it made. It was immediately obvious how far I had been stretching - no wonder I ended up with a sore back, sore shoulders and a headache. And the seat was immediately different as well.

Now that it’s sorted, I can’t believe I had been riding with it like that for so long. I was actually looking forward to getting on it to go for a ride - now that’s a breakthrough!

The real test will be the next big ride - Okoroire this weekend. Watch this space!

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 25th, 2010 at 7:30 pm and is filed under Bike. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.