Saturday, May 21, 2011

Bike fitpalooza

So I had the good fortune of observing some bike fittings today. The other day I had asked Sinead if I could tag along and watch her do some Retul bike fits. A few weeks ago she tweaked my bike fit using this system and I wanted to get a closer look at it.

Turns out she had 3 fittings scheduled today. When I arrived in Sag Harbor she was about to start the first one. I could identify many changes that would need to be made, but the great thing about the Retul system is it gives you great dynamic measurements to give you quick feedback about the changes you made. Some fitters use DartFish software, but you need to capture video, draw lines, measure angles, etc. Retul uses sensors on the body to take all those measurements for you. In the span of 6 hours, she went through 3 bike fits.

I'm grateful that Sinead let me swing by and 'help out'. When I left, I felt pretty good about my ability to see various movements on the bike and identify, most of the time, what corrections needed to be made.

This morning I went out early to get my ride in so I could get to Sag Harbor this afternoon. I was supposed to do a brick workout, but my Achilles tendon has been a little cranky this week. I felt some pain Wednesday when I started my run but it went away after ~1/2 mile. Of course afterwards it came back so I treated it at work and took it easy. I decided to skip my Thursday run to give it another day of rest. I could have tried to run through it, but I would rather take a day or two off and let it heal rather than have it flare up more. I knew if it got worse I would lose more than 2 days of running. It would be more like 2 weeks. And the reality is I wouldn't lose any fitness by taking a few days off from running. I took some ibuprofen last night and woke up feeling good this morning. I decided to just complete my ride and skip the run portion of the workout. I have a long run scheduled tomorrow so I wanted just one more day of rest. When I get up tomorrow, we'll see how I feel, but as of right now I should be able to get out to run. Hopefully it won't be too humid out there.

1 comment:

  1. Gee,thanks a bunch for the help Su, it was great to have a second pair of hands as well as a second pair of eyes! Let's do it again!

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