View Single Post
Old 02-22-10, 09:18 AM
  #44  
Torrilin
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Madison, WI
Posts: 1,522
Mentioned: 0 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 0 Post(s)
Likes: 0
Liked 0 Times in 0 Posts
All of these bikes will get you from point A to point B, even if A to B is a really long distance. By really long distance, I'm talking over 100 miles in a day.

Since you do not ride a lot right now, you don't have a way to judge if the fit is right for you or not. There are guidelines a store's fitter can use, but without getting your butt in the saddle and riding, you can't tell the fitter things like "I really need a bike that can haul 50lbs of groceries". And you can't tell them "I have stupidly short legs, so I really need a low bottom bracket or I fall trying to dismount at stop lights." Yes, these are real bike fit problems. Yes, I really have almost fallen from having about a 3" drop between my fully extended toe and the road, and not having 3" of space between me and the top tube.

So right now, the important thing is to pick a bike, and get your butt in the saddle. The bike will be the wrong fit. This is ok, normal, and kind of goes with the territory. For the average rider, the wrong fit will be pretty fixable with some help from a fitter and by swapping some parts. For me, not so much... but the average rider is not an arthritic 32 year old woman with a 29" inseam and 5'6" height who needs to haul 50lbs of groceries and store her bike in the basement. Odds are excellent you don't need anything as specialized as what I need. Even my partner, who has a similarly long torso, has an easier time finding a suitable bike than I do .

Stop stressing, keep the bike, and get some miles on it.
Torrilin is offline