Sizing up your bike
Sizing up your bike
The correct size bike is crucial to a comfortable and injury-free ride.
Too big a bike and your neck and back will suffer the consequences. You may also struggle to reach the brake levers and therefore put yourself and others in danger.
Have yourself a bike that’s too small and the cramped nature of the ride position will leave you looking pretty silly as well as far from comfortable and may also hamper power output.
Each of the road disciplines, such as racing, sportives, cyclo-cross, commuting and adventure/gravel, have bikes which require looking at the geometry of each individual frameset on a separate level.
Remember, these bikes may all look alike to the uninformed but the geometry will differ from discipline to discipline, and from bike to bike (you can read more about bicycle geometry here). It’s horses for courses.
Each frame will have slightly different tube lengths and angles to reflect the nature of its ride. As an example, the steeper angles and a shorter wheelbase of a race machine would make a gravel bike feel twitchy off road, so this must be catered for by the designers.
Going back to the start of this article, it’s critical to consider whether a bike’s geometry is right for you. There’s no use being lured in by the glamour of a machine from the Tour de France peloton, if it’s too low and long for you to ride comfortably, and you’d be better off on a ‘sportive’ bike. It works the other way, too, if you like an aggressive position for head-down racing.
To make matters more complicated, manufacturers will often size their bikes differently, whether it’s from XS to XXL, in centre increments according to the length of the toptube, or the length of the seattube. Some bikes will only come in a handful of sizes, while others will run into double figures.
Ensuring your buy the right size bike is vital, so this is where the experience of a trusted local bike shop can be invaluable, particularly for new or inexperienced riders. Carefully look at the sizing chart for each bike, take any relevant measurements and, if you can, throw your leg over the bike or take it for a test ride.
A bike fit may give you more peace of mind, whether you’ve had a fit in advance and know exactly what size you need as a result, or you have a fit as part of the bike-buying process.