It's been five years since I bought a new bike, and those have been five very uncomfortable riding years, so this year I decided to take advantage of our club sponsorship by Blue Competition Cycles and buy myself a new bike. Moving from a tri geometry to a road geometry was something that I had been thinking quite a lot about, and as a part of this I was determined to get the best fit I could afford. Anyone who has ridden with me over the past five years will tell you that I whined incessantly about numbness, discomfort and a general lack of bike fit, in spite of the fact that I had been fitted twice (once at Campus Cycles and once at REI).

Oh how little I knew back then...

With this in mind I decided that this time round I was going to get my bike fit done properly, and not at the local bike store, but rather by someone who understood a bit more about body mechanics as well as fit.

So I made an appointment with Todd Carver, the master fitter at Retul (another club sponsor), and armed with my bike, wife and child made the trip down to fivepoints to get fitted.

The first thing you notice as you walk into the Retul storefront is that they are NOT a bike store. Sure, they can fit you for and put together a custom bike, but these guys are all about the fit. From the 6 or so bikes they actually have on the walls for decoration to the stems, handlebars, saddles etc... that they have in the fit area you can immediately see that you are not going to be told that you would fit so much better on a custom bike but rather that you will be fitted onto the bike you walked in with.

Todd himself is an extremely personable guy. He will answer any question, and will not make you feel silly for asking.

The fit begins with a few questions - What are your goals, why do you feel like you need a fit? Where are your areas of discomfort? Describe discomfort / pain points etc...

Once that is taken care of Todd puts you on the massage table and does a physical evaluation of how flexible you are, how long your legs are, whether they are of equal length (I never knew one of my legs was longer than the other) and any other general physical attributes that could affect your bike fit.

After collecting your physical details it's time to get on the bike. Due to the 3D nature of the fit, you need to be fitted with electrodes that can monitor the motion of your body as you ride. The placement of these electrodes is important as they denote key points in the fit.

Up on the trainer and start riding, at which point Todd monitors the various angles and points of contact between your body and the bike on the big screen in real time.

For me a couple of small adjustments to saddle height, a new saddle and a new stem were required for the fit, and here is the interesting part. Due to the low sales volume (or at least this is my assumption) of parts Retul don't offer the big box type savings on parts if you buy through them. So no that isn't really that interesting, but what I did find very interesting was the fact that Todd was happy to refer me to several shops that could probably sell me the parts I needed for slightly less. Needless to say that I was more than happy to just buy them from Retul. I didn't think that the 20 minute drive each way, and the 2 week wait for another appointment justified the $10 in savings.

Also... I am a firm believer in supporting small businesses, especially when those businesses go out of their way to support us.

Todd recommended that I ride the new configuration for a few long rides, lent me a saddle to try so that I didn't need to buy one and then find out it didn't fit (nobody takes returns on saddles!) and fixed my stem. He also recommended some yoga to improve my flexibility.

At this point I have to admit I had already decided that I really liked Todd, he's just an affable, good guy. I ask a lot of questions and Todd was not only not thrown off by any of my questions, but had concise informed answers to all of them.

After a few long rides I had to go back in to get some minor tweaks made, and was again surprised by the level of professionalism and knowledge at Retul.

The final result? No more numbness (VERY good...), no more neck pain and a much more stable ride.

If you need to get your bike fit adjusted, or are just uncomfortable or thinking of buying a new bike I would highly recommend taking advantage of our club sponsorship at Retul. Simply put this was one of my more interesting and beneficial experiences with a triathlon vendor!

Yon.