Thread: Stack and Reach
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Old 07-20-15, 10:00 AM
  #21  
RollCNY
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Originally Posted by Fastfwd01
I have short legs and a long torso.
OP,
I am of similar build: short legs, long torso, long arms. When I use fit calculators, such as Competitive Cyclists, they spit out numbers that are outside of the realm of any production bike. Going from memory, they say something like a 690mm effective top tube and a 180mm stem for my 6'4" height.

Similarly, when I walk into a shop, they want to steer me to XL frames, or 63's, but I have had far better luck learning what works for me, and that is invariably sizing down. I ride 58/59cm frames, and use saddle to bar drop to get the length that I need. I have never seen an endurance frame that would work comfortably for my body proportions. The taller head tube puts the bars too high, and I end up sitting essentially bolt upright.

I would wager that if your morphology is similar to mine, you could sit on a stock "race" bike and not be uncomfortable. If you look at any models stack and reach by size inside a given model, they get taller much faster than they get longer. I looked at the Allez and Roubaix tables, and going from 49 to 61, reach grows by 2cm and stack grows by 10cm over that range. When you get to larger sizes, quite often bikes get very tall for minimal length, and getting a comfortable position for short legs and long torso/arms gets much more difficult, at least for me.

Good luck.
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