Originally Posted by my58vw

Ok another fit thread... (53-11 hint hint)

I have a 63 cm trek and I am trying to squeeze all the performance possible out of the bike and also at the same time work all the muscles of my legs about as equally as I can for muscle endurance, etc.

First thing to note is that the bike does not fit... it is a 63 cm, 60.5 cm TT, 72.5 degree seat angle, which in actuality is probably about 70 degrees with a few things I have done with the bike... i.e.

The seat post is a 330 mm, and I have it about 1 cm higher than the minimum insert was on my old post, i.e. it has a lot of post sticking out. I also have the saddle (airone) pushed back nearly to the end of the rails (i.e. pushed all the way back. I have a 130 mm stem on the bike, and the bike already feels a little twichy compared to my TT bike with a 110 mm stem.

Now when I am riding I am feeling all the stress on the little muscles around my ankle, and my calve, and not in the big supporting muscles like the quads and hamstrings, although I know they are working. The problem is those little muscles start to hurt so much that my quads never really start to burn before I have to slow down. When I look down it feels like I am riding a recumbant at the gym, the darn pedals are way forward. Now I have experimented today with sitting on the nose of the saddle, and that seemed to help the power issue but now I am not confortable on the bike, my shoulders are squished up and I can not really go for a longer stem...

The bars when warming up are a little low but once after about 5 miles of warming up, my hamstrings loosen up and I get very very comfortable, can get very aero, etc, actually so much that my fat belly (not bad but) hits my legs in the very most dropped possition.

Short of getting a new custom frame (which I will have to do eventually) is there anything you could suggest the help out the power issue?

I really feel like the bike is holding me back some at this point...