a visit to a not so LBS

[short cut sally]

Well, DH decided to quit work early and we went to the "city" (a large town with malls, HOme Depot's and Lowe's) which is a good hour one way away. I wanted to go to the bike shop and look at toe warmers or booties as my feet froze on this mornings ride. I've been to this shop maybe 3 times in a little over a year, and ended up with the same young man waiting on me each time. He helped with the selection of toe coverings, then I looked around and decided I wanted some new liners for inside my cycling shoes as I didn't think there was much support left in mine. I was unsure where to start to find out which one would be best for me,so he had me stand barefoot, walk forward, backwards, do one legged squats then put a new liner in. Said one leg was more angled than the other, and did I ever experience knee pain. Yep, not until recently, and he was surprised when I said outer aspect. He adjusted my cleat angles (I have mtb bike shoes on my road bike) and said he wished my bike was here. As fate would have it, I had it in the back of my truck. Which on the way to the city, DH was complaining as he was going to be bringing stuff home and having the bike just makes it an inconvenience, yada yada. So he went graciously and brought in my bike, they had me change into a pair of their new shorts off rack and said they were going to adjust everything for me, as I never really had a true bike fitting. (I bought bike at a LBS, shoes from another LBS and the 2 were never really married). SO on the trainer the bike went, and he tagged my knees and measured and leveled and changed my shoe liners/inserts again and said that it looked better. He also made me peddle and peddle and the sweat was rolling, I was wearing a long sleeve sweater. He made the observation almost immediately that I don't peddle effeciently. I apparently peddle with my toes pointing down at most of my stroke. He kept reminding me to peddle flat and put my heel down. So now at the end of the season, and after 2 years of riding a road bike, I am learning how to ride all over again. So tomorrow will be my first day out as an old dog learning new tricks. Has anyone else ever had this experience? And, even though I did purchase the toe warmers and the shoe liners, he never charged me for any of the fitting, and I bet he spent a good hour getting the proper fit. Not sure if that is common or not, but I was very impressed with his time and knowledge. I left there thinking, now why couldn't they be closer to home, and very appreciative of his time. Thanks for listening..shelly

[velogirl]

Send him a nice tip, Shelly. Maybe a box of cookies or brownies?

Fall & winter are great times to spend time at your LBS. In most of the US, business gets very slow so the staff has lots of time to focus on you. The more time you spend in the shop, the more likely you are to purchase something.

Lorri

ps -- where are you from in NY? I'm from Chemung County originally -- Onondaga County more recently (and I can still spell Onondaga).

[short cut sally]

Velogirl, Steuben county borders Chemung to its west, and south west of Onondaga county. I was thinking about dropping in with a small pkg. of coffees or something, as he was drinking coffee while i was there. I didn't get a change to out on the bike today to try and correct my bad habits, really windy and rainy off and on. Thanks for the reply..shelly

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

He made the observation almost immediately that I don't peddle effeciently. I apparently peddle with my toes pointing down at most of my stroke. He kept reminding me to peddle flat and put my heel down. So now at the end of the season, and after 2 years of riding a road bike, I am learning how to ride all over again. So tomorrow will be my first day out as an old dog learning new tricks. Has anyone else ever had this experience? ...shelly

Hi Shelly,
I've only been riding for 4 months, but have worked up to being able to do 40 mile rides now. As I improved, I kept raising my seat several times to avoid knee pain, but I kept finding I didn't notice much difference when I raised my seat each time. Then I finally realized that I was pedaling most of the time with my toes down and heels up. That was effectively bending my legs more, acting against my seat raising! Put my saddle back where it belonged and have been concentrating now on keeping my feet flat while pedaling. I keep catching my heels drifting up and toes pointing down, and correcting it over and over. After 2 weeks of this, I am getting better at it and i think my feet are starting to behave more now. It IS a whole re-training thing. But so good to catch this and correct it! An awful habit, and so easy to get into. I remember in my girlhood horse riding days (a few lifetimes ago), the instructors always yelling "Heels down!!!"

[spokewench]

I lead women's rides here in town and on one such ride I looked down at the 6 girls that were riding with me and 5 out of 6 were riding with their heels up. It was interesting trying to convince them to try to change their habits!

I was just floored that many of the ladies were doing the same thing!

[Bad JuJu]

I've had to work on the heels-down habit, too. Something that helped me was that I read somewhere that while pedaling, you should imagine putting your foot down to scrape something off the bottom of your shoe--not the toe, but the mid-to-rear sole. This has really helped me to keep my heels down, not that they don't drift up occasionally, but I'm building the habit of keeping them down most of the time.