Ummmm ... altho I am something of a Loyal Disciple of the Church of the Riv, I'm leery about their "bigger is better" philosophy.

One of the reasons why I'm getting a replacement for Pokey (*gasp*) is because he's a wee bit on the large side for they way I want to set him up now. I went strictly by PBH when I bought Pokey and got a 57 cm frame. That did not give me very much top tube clearance, but when I was using 27mm tires it was fine. But now that I have Dusty, my speedy road bike that I run happily with 25 mm tires, I wanted to set up Pokey with wider tires for more general purpose trail and touring. And unfortunately Pokey's frame is a bit too large for me to allow me to go beyond 30-32-ish mm tires and give me adequate top tube clearance. So I shoulda gone with a 55 cm frame.

My advice, check your saddle height - take your current bike and measure the distance between the center of the crank and the top of your saddle. *In general* it's supposed to be about 10 cm less than your PBH, but in my case my comfy saddle height is about 69-70 cm which is more than 10 cm less than my PBH of 81 cm - maybe I'm a mutant or something. So I'm getting a 54 cm Saluki, the Gospel According to Grant be damned (d'oh, whosaidthat????)

Also, your torso is probably shorter than a guy's which is another reason why you should lean to the smaller side rather than the larger side. Luckily with Rivs a too-long top tube can be somewhat compensated for by using a shorter stem (I use a 70 mm stem on Pokey rather than the 'standard' 100 mm stem) and/or raising the handlebars, but still.

hth, - Jo.