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Old September 16th 19, 06:17 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
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Default Difference in Handlebar width.

On Sunday, September 15, 2019 at 7:58:06 PM UTC-4, jbeattie wrote:
On Sunday, September 15, 2019 at 2:44:52 PM UTC-7, Tom Kunich wrote:
I have been riding 44 cm handlebars for a very long time. And I have always had sore shoulders after long rides.

I changed my LeMond to a 42 as a test and it made a remarkable difference. No more sore shoulders on the hard rides I've been doing.

Yesterday I rode the Colnago on the metric and when I got back from the ride my right shoulder was so painful I couldn't rotate my elbow above shoulder level.

On Friday I had changed the 100 mm stem on the LeMond to a 120 carbon fiber model that has a full contact front piece. In this process I didn't fully align the stem properly. Today riding out on a short 21 mile recovery ride my LEFT shoulder began hurting and leaning down and looking closely I could see that the stem as only a couple of degrees off perfect. Midway I stopped in a store and got a coffee and then pulled out a multitool and aligned it as well as you could by sight. Riding off the pain was completely gone.

So not only is the bar width pretty important but the alignment has to be a whole more closer than you might had suspected.

Yesterday's Metric had a 14.5 mph average and I had missed breakfast so stopped and got a Breakfast Jack which I sure won't do again. I had a slight stomach ache all day. So I started the ride a little low on energy and the stops sure didn't help any. Trail mix and bananas?

On the second rest stop I had half of one of those plastic glasses of Gatoraide which I also don't like. My brother had showed up early so I didn't have my extra water bottle with Propel in it.

In any case, I'm sure that the stress on me yesterday made me more sensitive to the alignment of the bars today but it did show that the alignment has to be really close.


Maybe it was a width change. Maybe a drop change. Maybe a reach change. Bar shapes are varied these days, and you can get super scientific with lever position. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY0RzAT4YI0 I'm more sensitive to reach changes than width changes.

I rode two hours in the pouring rain today and was disappointed in my super-awesome Shower's Pass jacket which probably needs some Nikwax because it has grown leaky with old age (old Elite Pro model superseded by the Spring Classic jacket) Every jacket soaks through after a while, but it happened too fast today. Last week was a "metric" with one stop at Crown Point for a 60 second selfie. https://tinyurl.com/yxu8f7bu I got slaughtered on the way home by a headwind. Low mileage this weekend. Oh well, I'm not training for anything.

Clothes today were Showers Pass base layer (wool/poly), historic 40 year old Kucharik wool long sleeve jersey because its just right under a jacket in fall, my Showers Pass jacket, Amfib tights, so-so neoprene booties, cleats, short gloves and helmet -- which oozed salt and god-knows-what from the sweat band. A good soaking clears out the sweat band. 28mm 4-Seasons on my full-fender Synapse super disc rain bike. My glasses were so wet and fogged that I was descending by Braille. And the steep slopes were like stream beds. At least I didn't get chased by a landslide. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84ufHp8jcRk&t=54s That road is part of the ride up to Pittock Manson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtXy-UfKDLE&t=28s

-- Jay Beattie.


I remember way back in the 1980s reading about adjusting bicycle fit and the experts said to adjust one thing at a time and do the adjustments in small increments so you could tell afterwards which change helped or made things worse.

Cheers
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