The last little while, Ian’s been struggling a bit on the BCC road rides. That was really weird to me, because he’d been getting stronger and stronger. At first, on the Banff-Lake Louise ride, I thought for sure he must have had a brake rubbing. But even accounting for his gravel crash he was definitely not at 100%. But on the gravel rides on his new Kona Rove, he was ripping it up. The common factor seemed to be his Cube road bike, but I checked it over, and couldn’t find anything wrong with it.
To resolve this, I proposed a science experiment. We would take his Cube and my old Specialized and Ian would ride them back to back over a set course. I would time him and see if he was dramatically slower on the Cube. We expected that all things being equal, he would be faster on the Specialized, with its carbon frame and wheels. But if he was dramatically slower on the Cube, we could consider taking it to the shop to have a pro look it over, and maybe bring the Specialized to Victoria for Ian to ride in the Tour.
But before we even went out to Tuscany Springs Boulevard, I measured the Cube’s seat height so that I could set the Specialized to the same height. Then I got Ian to go once around the block on both bikes just to see that they were set up right. But when I saw Ian ride away, it struck me that his seat looked too low. I measured the Kona’s seat height (just set up by a pro two weeks ago) and it was almost an inch higher. I quickly raised both the Cube and Specialized seats and then we ran the test. Ian rode to the “red park” and back on each bike. He was faster on the Specialized (as expected), but not that much faster: 4:20 vs. 4:37, a difference of five percent. That said to me that the problem wasn’t the bike per se, but I anticipated the raising of the seat would make all the difference.
On tonight’s ride, Ian was back to his regular self. Success.
