Since the last instalment, I have ridden the bike a bit more and converted the saddle back to its sprung form as a Flyer instead of a B17. I’ve swapped on a Shimano chain, replaced a failed rear hub bearing, given myself a little lesson on how not to grease the crank tapers (oops) and discovered that bottle cages are not all the same. I also put on some (pricey) thick Ergon BT Gravel handlebar tape. Things feel pretty harmonious and confidence-inspiring and it looks like me and the bike are finally good for some longer rides. A bike will never not be a work in progress, but I hope there’s less workshop and more outdoors in the near future.

It was after working through the bike fit a bit more systematically that things came out about right and pretty much as I hypothesized at the beginning. I thought I needed a shorter frame and this seems to be confirmed. It makes it easier to find a comfortable, balanced position. I needed a bit more saddle setback but also a bit less reach to the bars.

The bike in a garden, green grass behind. Olive green handlebar tape. Blue and green bottles.
The bike
The bike from the left side.
The bike from the other side
Front view showing the long front mudguard, the headlight, the black front bag, and the handlebars with the brake levers.
The bike from the front
Close up of a Reynolds 531 ST decal on a metallic blue bike tube, shining in sunlight.
Reynolds 531 ST seat tube decal
A pair of neatly contoured gear shifting levers, in cutout style, mounted on a metal band around a metallic blue bike tube. The band is stamped with the words SACHS HURET.
Sachs Huret downtube shifters
Close up of chainwheels and the centre of the crank, highly polished aluminium crank with the word SACHS and a logo forming a Q on the top arm of the spider.
Sachs Quarz crank
A black plastic pedal with a steel clip. Logo TIME in white on the black plastic.
Time Atac 4 pedal
Brown leather saddle with copper rivets at the back shining in the sun. Underneath we see a black frame with coil springs at the back.
Re-Flyered saddle
Close-up of a brake lever. The hood is long and rises to a bump at the front, and is of a matt rubbery material. The lever is shiny aluminium and has a doubly scalloped shape: the top half and the bottom half.
TRP RRL brake lever
A front derailleur with a black outer paralellogram plate with the words Shimano Deore in white and XT in gold. There is a blue crimped end on the cable.
Deore XT front derailleur
Shimano Deore XT rear derailleur, black outer paralellogram plate, the rest is polished metal.
Deore XT rear derailleur
A small battery headlight is perched in front of the bag on the font rack. There is a reflection of sunlight and the green grass in it.
Busch & Müller IQ Eyro headlight
A small round red light with a black body hangs on a leather strap at the back of the dark green saddlebag. Three LEDs are visible in the light.
Lezyne Zecto Drive rear light
The bike, one year after first ride

Thoughts:

  • Analyzing my bike fit somewhat objectively was overdue. Don’t leave it until you’re my age to set the bike up on a trainer, or something else that allows you to sit on it and check your position with pictures from the side, and with the sitting-up tests, etc.
  • Notes to myself for riding: Don’t ride with my elbows locked out. Keep my wrists straight, not letting them collapse to the inside of the hoods. Keep my upper back straight (or what passes for it) and a little bit engaged. Do learn to check in with myself every 10 minutes whether I’m sitting right.
  • On frame geometry, if you’re comparing frame lengths, watch out for the seat tube angle. The top tube on the Mercian is 3 cm shorter than the Alves, but because the seat tube is 74° instead of 73°, about 1 cm of this saving isn’t available, because I just need more saddle setback.
  • Handlebars: They have a huge range of reach. Measure the actual width at the place where your hoods are and make sure you have bars that are a little bit narrower than your shoulders. Wide bars are not a good solution to steering. You should be steering the bike with your body. Get the relationship of bum to pedals right first. Then get the handlebars to where they need to be.
  • The most problematic bit of old steel frames is tyre clearance, especially at the front. I have popped a 584 mm wheel into the front fork to see how a 650B conversion might look, but I’m not convinced. The tradeoff would be tyre clearance against bottom bracket height. There might be a spot where both are ok, but there wouldn’t be a lot of freedom to choose tyre sizes and the clearance might become tight laterally (especially at the chainstays) rather than radially.

Bike fit is body fit
A bike fit takes two: it’s about your body as well as your bike. The position I’ve ended up with is a reality check on where I am at: a rather short, less flexible and overweight guy in his late 50s. My back and core aren’t very strong and neither are my hands. 2019 was my last even reasonable year of riding. There’s no use doing a bike fit for how I wish I was. I need to get riding as I am now. If I get fitter, stronger, more mobile, lighter, it’s easy to adjust the bike for that.

Relative to some young racing cyclist, my bike may look like a sitting-up position, almost like a Dutch shopping bike. But it’s not. For me this is an active, dynamic position where I feel my upper body is contributing what it should, where I can stand up on the pedals without the feeling of hauling myself over a hump, and where the steering feels natural and on my side, instead of something I’m slightly at odds with. I’d be optimistic that just about everyone can find a position where these things are true.

Something that’s made a big difference to me over the last 10 years or so has been Pilates, and to this day I fail to understand why the classes are not full of middle-aged guys like myself; I’m usually the only man and often the oldest person in a group. But guys like me can benefit massively. I sit at my desk to make a living and then I sit on a bike for exercise. It stands to reason that I need something to balance this out.

As it happened, about the same time as I contemplated getting a new bike, I also switched from group mat classes to one-to-one lessons. I originally did this because of a Covid wave, but it turned into a year of sessions. This has taught me a lot about noticing how I am carrying out various movements, and where my limitations are, and how I can work on them. It’s also shown me how interconnected my whole Bewegungsapparat (what’s that in English? musculoskeletal system, I guess) is. A pain in your foot may need you to work on the whole leg and your posture all the way up to your shoulders. But what also really helps is the matter-of-fact functional approach of my Pilates trainer(s) (and I’ve been to a couple of physios too) to my body. This kind of un-effusive acceptance: this is how it is, we can work with it, oh look, that’s better now. It’s given me an understanding that’s steadier than the ups and downs of how I feel when I catch sight of myself in the mirror, or weigh myself. When some initially hard exercise begins to work better, I know I’m making progress. And amazingly, because I used to be pretty lazy about doing stuff outside classes, I now have a repertoire of exercises I do at home and I actually do them. I like doing them, they have become a happy place. I actually invested about the same sum of money in the Pilates lessons as in the bike, and it was well spent.

Hey, fellas: It’s not all about the bike.

Bike fitters
If you’re like me, you like taking the long way round with things. I’m an old scientist and a DIY guy and I like learning about stuff by trial and error (lots and lots of error). But most people aren’t like me, and there’s a strong case to be made that I should have put myself in the hands of a pro bike fitter years ago. I could have had a bike that fit me a lot sooner and saved money. A bike fitter will have a trainer where you can set up your bike and pedal on it and get warmed up and do those tests properly. They’ll have a fully adjustable fitting jig and/or a logical series of parts such as stems, handlebars etc instead of my odd collection of stuff. They’ll have a studio with a flat, level floor and enough space to have a good look at you and take pictures. They’ll be able to measure stuff better than I can and they’ll have the experience to sort you out. And ideally, they’ll have the ability of a good physio or trainer to acquaint you with the characteristics of your body and the things you need to do without being discouraging. Shoutout to Scott and John. If I’d been near them, I’d have gone to them. And as I’ve made heavy use of what they’ve provided for free, the least I can do is say thanks, and go and bring them your money.

Budget
So far the bike project has cost about € 2500. I’m happy enough with this because the bike has already gone through a list of variations and customizations for a price that would have been the starting point for an off-the-peg model (with rather average quality of the parts & frame). I think using the old frame and mostly old-ish parts works out, more or less, as a reasonably priced way of getting the kind of bike I need for the kind of riding I want to do. YMMV.

The main things I haven’t dealt with yet that will cost a significant sum are the wheels – still using the old wheels from the Alves – and lighting. I have bought Roger Musson’s book on wheelbuilding and intend to do something about that in the near future. If I approach doing longer rides, some kind of dynamo system is going to be relevant.

Outlook
Time to shut up and ride, I think 🙂

But no, I’m going to say one last thing and that is what I think an ideal frame for me would be like. It would be another 1 cm shorter in the front, but the seat tube angle would be 73° or maybe even less. The head angle could probably be less than 72°. The chainstays, and the front fork, could both be 1 cm longer and there would be good room for 35 mm tyres with mudguards. The top tube might slope up towards the front in order to let the head tube be a bit longer.