Noahs_arc
Regular
Well there you go!, cycling comes in to my life. For may years I have dismissed going out on a road bike for two main reasons 1) when I was a kid my father had an affair and took 'my' spanking new road bike (Raleigh of course) and gave it to his 'bit of stuff's' son! - yeah imagine that... well upset I was. He came back to the family but never replaced the bike!. He wasn't the spiteful type, just liked a bit of skirt :-) 2) I bought a mountain bike early 90's and hated every stroke/pedal on the road. Effort vs Return not good, so it was relegated to the back of the shed for simple rides down the river bank! I even bought a second MT bike as I didn't believe how bad the first one was. Still hated it.
So years passed with tennis, football and jogging buggering up my knee I was coaxed, by a mate, to look at road bikes. "Man he said you'll love it and you'll shed the pounds off" ...lose pounds?!!! that sounds good. So I jumped in the deep end and off I popped to Evans London to simply buy a good bike!. Yeah Italian I thought, bit of bling but not tooooo much. Wilier that's the one for me so the very helpful assistant in Evans pulled out a Trestina 55 cm - 'jump on that' he said. This guy knew alot about fitting and had his own fitting business. Narh my shoulders felt over the handlebars 'that's too small he said they do come up small'. Now I'm 15 1/2st - 5' 8" - about a 30 inside leg, 'I think the next size up will be too big for you'. 'How about this baby' >pointing to a Bianchi C2C Nirone 57 cm >celeste< "WHAT that -Do you think I'm a girl?" Yeah it's a matter of taste. Anyway for a laugh i jumped on it. Hey this doesn't feel too bad. Ping Ping stick it on the credit card..
Off I trot on my first three rides. Ah freedom, bliss, no kids, no wife for 2 to 3 hours. Effort vs Rewards = massive. BUT then the pins and needles set in, quick phone call back to my mate at the shop. Result of the conversation = I buy a shorter stem 150 down to 100. That should do it. Erh NO! (I'll live with it) Then the big one! after consistent riding, I start to get pains right across the top left hand side of my chest just above the heart and below the collar bone. Eeek heart issues? Hmm not sure, so I have an ECG results fine, but blood pressure on the high side 150/100. Move on; as I work in the NHS I had access to a Cardiologist and I mentioned this to her, just after I told her how attractive she looked ;-) she said "hmmm that's too high for angina she prodded me and said that looks like a muscular complaint, however get yourself thoroughly checked out. Basically I can ride for 3 hours, feel great, but I need to massage the area above the heart to ease the dull pain off. Then I'm fine. Back on the bike 2 / 3 days after 30 miles no problems. massage again. During the day niggles.
What the hell could this be? So one thought was that perhaps the bike is too big for me. I have been to a fitting service (specialist in triathletes - skinny bastards) and took the bike, they never mentioned that the bike was too big for me - we fiddled around with the seat up/down front/back.... and foot position. Ping £75 cheers!
So getting down to the real questions. 1) Has any one experienced this type of pain and 2) would a 57cm Bianchi be suitable for my build? 3) is there a difference between sizes/feel on these types of bikes. I don't get the process of erh try this bike and getting a proper fitting surely you'd need to take a dozen bikes to the fitting service. Dont think Evans would approve of that agreement. What do you think!?
So years passed with tennis, football and jogging buggering up my knee I was coaxed, by a mate, to look at road bikes. "Man he said you'll love it and you'll shed the pounds off" ...lose pounds?!!! that sounds good. So I jumped in the deep end and off I popped to Evans London to simply buy a good bike!. Yeah Italian I thought, bit of bling but not tooooo much. Wilier that's the one for me so the very helpful assistant in Evans pulled out a Trestina 55 cm - 'jump on that' he said. This guy knew alot about fitting and had his own fitting business. Narh my shoulders felt over the handlebars 'that's too small he said they do come up small'. Now I'm 15 1/2st - 5' 8" - about a 30 inside leg, 'I think the next size up will be too big for you'. 'How about this baby' >pointing to a Bianchi C2C Nirone 57 cm >celeste< "WHAT that -Do you think I'm a girl?" Yeah it's a matter of taste. Anyway for a laugh i jumped on it. Hey this doesn't feel too bad. Ping Ping stick it on the credit card..
Off I trot on my first three rides. Ah freedom, bliss, no kids, no wife for 2 to 3 hours. Effort vs Rewards = massive. BUT then the pins and needles set in, quick phone call back to my mate at the shop. Result of the conversation = I buy a shorter stem 150 down to 100. That should do it. Erh NO! (I'll live with it) Then the big one! after consistent riding, I start to get pains right across the top left hand side of my chest just above the heart and below the collar bone. Eeek heart issues? Hmm not sure, so I have an ECG results fine, but blood pressure on the high side 150/100. Move on; as I work in the NHS I had access to a Cardiologist and I mentioned this to her, just after I told her how attractive she looked ;-) she said "hmmm that's too high for angina she prodded me and said that looks like a muscular complaint, however get yourself thoroughly checked out. Basically I can ride for 3 hours, feel great, but I need to massage the area above the heart to ease the dull pain off. Then I'm fine. Back on the bike 2 / 3 days after 30 miles no problems. massage again. During the day niggles.
What the hell could this be? So one thought was that perhaps the bike is too big for me. I have been to a fitting service (specialist in triathletes - skinny bastards) and took the bike, they never mentioned that the bike was too big for me - we fiddled around with the seat up/down front/back.... and foot position. Ping £75 cheers!
So getting down to the real questions. 1) Has any one experienced this type of pain and 2) would a 57cm Bianchi be suitable for my build? 3) is there a difference between sizes/feel on these types of bikes. I don't get the process of erh try this bike and getting a proper fitting surely you'd need to take a dozen bikes to the fitting service. Dont think Evans would approve of that agreement. What do you think!?
