Originally Posted by rich88

Pedro,

For years I always assumed I had a proportionally longer torso and rode around for years on bikes that had super long top tubes. I had this Greg Lemond, all stretched out thing going on. A few years ago I educated myself about fit and reevaluated my setup. One consequence was that I discovered I may have a longer torso but had shorter arms so as far as reach was concerned I was pretty average.

My fit philosophy has been distilled down to: go for a frame that is small as possible that allows you to obtain perfect reach with a standard length/rise stem, good fore/aft balance and that doesn't require an excessive amount of spacers to get your bar drop exactly where you want it.

As far as different riding styles , think that only part that matters, as far as frame selections is how much bar drop you want/can tolerate.

I thinks its a mistake to buy a frame that may not be the optimal size/geometry and assume that you can just swap out stems/spacers etc. I just feel that if ideal fit is the goal your odds of achieving this are greatly enhanced if you start out with a frame size/geometry that is as close as possible to what your dimensions/bar drop needs require.