Quote Originally Posted by 3for3 View Post
I am also very new to cycling, but it sounds like we have the same build, so I thought I would pass on one piece of advice that was very helpful to me when looking for my bike. I was looking at a lot of women's specific designed bikes. I assumed they would be more comfortable for me, until I went to a bike shop, they took my measurements, and it turned out that my inseam to torso ratio meant that wsd bikes would not fit me properly. So whatever you get, make sure you get fitted properly!
Cervelo has an interesting take on women's specific designs. They say it's all marketing garbage. I tend to believe Cervelo. Smart guys. Smart bikes. The only major bike manufacturers with more engineers than marketers on their staff.


Women-specific geometry
Why don't you offer any women-specific geometry?

Answer - Women-specific geometry
Fit and proper geometry are just as important for women and they are for men, but unfortunately women-specific geometry does a disservice to this need and is a bit of a marketing gimmick. Especially when you look at exactly what they changed compared to the standard bikes, one can only frown. In short, neither the concept of women-specific design nor the execution makes sense. Consider the following:

1) Most importantly, there is no difference in body dimensions between men and women. If you look at a 5'1 man and a 5'1 woman, the average body dimensions are identical. Since women are shorter on average than men it appears to be a gender issue, but it really isn't, it's a short-person issue. So the trick is not to design women-specific geometry, but to make sure the geometry makes sense for shorter people. We do that, and every bike company should do that - one has to make sure that not only the geometry for a 56 or 58cm frame is properly designed, but also the 51cm and the 48cm.

2) It is true that most small frames don't fit women properly, but they also don't fit men properly (which is no surprise when you consider issue #1). The problem is that the smaller frames don't really get that much smaller with most manufacturers, both because they don't know how to handle issues like toe overlap and because they don't really understand the correlation between effective toptube length and seattube angle (as unbelievable as it sounds that bike companies sometimes don't understand bike geometry, it's really true).

3) Most women-specific geometry have shorter toptubes but also steeper seattubes. The shorter toptube gets the headtube closer to the rider, but the steeper seattube pushes the headtube forward again. Net result: nothing

4) The real trick is to look at the cockpit length, or more specifically the horizontal distance from the bottom bracket to the headtube (see the diagram). When you set up a bike, you will put the saddle a certain horizontal distance behind the bottom bracket. This is irrespective of the exact seattube angle of the frame, you will simply move the saddle fore and aft on the rails until the saddle is the correct distance behind the bottom bracket. How far away the handlebars are is dependent on how far the saddle is behind the bb and how far the headtube is in front of the bb. Since you won't change the saddle position, you only need to consider the bb-headtube dimension, the horizontal dimension on the diagram. You can see on the diagram that if a manufacturer shortens the toptube but at the same time steepens the seattube enough, the headtube won't come any closer. This problem is not only existent on women-specific designs, most small frames from manufacturers barely get shorter horizontal dimensions. so if the 51cm frame from these manufacturers is too big, so will the 48cm be.


5) On our road bikes, we design by horizontal dimension, so the 48cm frame is shorter than the 51cm frame, just as it should. So if the 51cm is too long, the 48cm will likely fit. Just to give you an idea, our 48cm frame has a shorter horizontal dimension than most women-specific 43 and 45cm frames around.

6) As a sidenote, some women-specific parts do make sense. There is of course the women-specific saddle, which can be a real problem-solver for some (although there are also plenty of women who prefer "mens" saddles). For people with smaller hands (women or men) the special handlebars and STI levers that put the levers closer to the bars also can provide an advantage.