I said to myself that I would not respond to this thread, but after reading some of the posts, I decided to give my two cents worth. When I started riding again, I was 63 and hadn't been on a bicycle in well over twenty years. The bike I started with was comfort bike that my wife bought me for my birthday. The guy at the bike shop did an eyeball fitting when I picked it up which was OK for me because I was riding around the neighborhood doing two and three mile rides. I thought the bike was darn comfortable and never had any problems with pain anywhere on my body. Then I started riding longer and putting in more miles and decided that the comfort bike was not going to work for the amount of riding I was doing. So, off I went and bought a hybrid. Again, the bike shop owner did an eyeball fitting and that worked OK for a while but then came the pain and discomfort. I started reading up on fitting and started tweaking the bike and lo-and-behold, everything was great.

Six months later, after talking to some friends I had made in a bike club, I decided to start doing some charity rides and off I went and got my very first road bike. Got the bike home and transferred all the measurements from the hybrid to the road bike and all seemed find. There was a little soreness in the shoulders every once in a while, but I was 64 and expected that at my age. Bike wise, everything was nice and comfy for the twenty mile rides that I was doing at the time. I told my son-in-law's best friend, a competitive triathlete, that I was getting ready to do an MS 150 within the month and he asked if I had had a pro fitting and advised me that I should if I was going to do a long ride.

I started doing some research on bike fitting systems and after a good week or so of reading about all of them, ended up going with a Retul fit. I called one of the three shops in the area that offered it and made an appointment. My fit consisted of three, one hour sessions, one week apart. At the end of the first session, I went out and rode the bike for 20 miles and it honestly felt like I was on a totally different bike. By the end of the last session, it felt as if the bike was custom made for me. I went from a 32 mile, longest ride to a 53 mile ride the first day of the MS-150 and a 50 mile return ride. At the end of both days of the MS, I felt as if I had only gone around the block and not 50 miles. While he was doing the fitting, besides the obvious settings, he adjusted the handlebar and the brifters to a more comfortable position for my body. All the angles of my body were checked against proven standard angles to make sure I was in an optimal position. He adjusted the cleats on my shoes and tried different shims until my feet were in an optimal side-to-side position on the pedals with the least amount of float. Doing that kept my knees in and parallel to the bike frame instead of kicking out to the side like they were. I would have never guessed to adjust cleats and use shims to fix that problem. And had I know about it, how would I measure it?

My take on bike fitting is that if you have been riding for many years and feel that what you are doing or what you have done is the best for you and you are comfortable and have no problems, that's great! More power to you. However, I read these posts and always read that pro fittings are a waste of time and money. Well, if you are new to cycling or don't really know what you are doing when making these adjustments, then why would you waste time trying to adjust something and ride in pain and discomfort until you finally find a position that may, may not be the best and most efficient position for you? I also have to wonder just how many that have never had a really good fit, such as Retul or Guru, would say the same thing after having one done. On average, I put 200-250 miles a week on my bike. There is no way that I could ride that many miles without being completely comfortable and riding in my most optimal position. I have done a few saddle adjustments when the saddle might get out of whack from a fall and have had no issues, but I still go and have a fitting adjustment every year to make sure that everything is still correct. For me, the Retul fitting was the best money I have spent on cycling, other than the bike itself. I would never tell a new rider or someone not familiar with fitting a bike to tinker with it until you think you got it right. And the concept that you have to be a pro in order to benefit from one of these fittings is just so wrong in so many ways.