bike fit

Project: Power Output

This has been a weird year on the bike — tons of shoulder/upper back pain that’s made riding a difficult proposition. Also, lower power output for reasons I couldn’t ascertain, and a touch of iliotibial band problems. So I decided to go through and re-assess my bike fit completely.

A big thanks to Tim at the Uptown Penn Cycle for the Fit Kit process. And big ups to Dan at Grand Performance for the help with the forefoot varus issues. I’m much more comfortable on the bike, and my knees are no longer banging into the top tube.

What I’ve done is the following:

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Shoulder Issues

So as I’d previously mentioned, I have some shoulder issues. Earlier this week, a run-through of the Fit Kit revealed a seat that was too low and a stem that … Read more

Frostbike ’08 Recap

So Frostbike, QBP‘s miniature trade show, has come and gone. I hit both weekend days, learned a lot, met a bunch of cool people, and came away with a bunch of free schwag and evil ideas.

Saturday was a pretty good day. I rolled in just before 10am, cruised the expo floor, and then spent the rest of the day learning everything I could about running a bike shop.1 My first stop was a seminar on inventory management where I had my mind absolutely blown by the volume of what I didn’t know. Lunch followed, then another swing through the expo floor, where I talked to the guy from Oval Concepts about their aerobar line, chatted with the dude from Crank Bros. about the future of their product line, and then cruised back upstairs for a seminar on the cost of doing business — a 90-minute session that covered everything from initial start-up capital, to applying GMROI to employees, to the transition from credit-based operations to cash-based operations. At the end of the day, my head was spinning, I was more psyched than ever to get my shop opened, and I had resolved to go out and get myself an MBA.

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