Quote Originally Posted by arielmoon View Post
Oh yes, thank you aicabsolut for sharing your experience. If I understand correctly, they moved the bars down to compensate for the saddle moving forward and that worked to keep your neck from getting sore?
Yes, I had to extend my reach to make it more like what it was when the saddle was much farther back, so we lowered the bars fair amount (I already use a 110mm stem). I had been hunching my shoulders up to make more room at my comfortable body angle (and I also have a fair amount of elbow bend), and that stressed my traps, causing neck pain and headaches. I also noticed a big improvement in handling when I lowered the stem angle.

I've just done some more tweaking--I raised the hoods on the bars a couple notches and rotated the bars down so I could have better leverage for sprinting in the drops. Now I feel a tiny bit cramped again from having the hoods closer, even after the downward rotation somehow. I may take out another 1/2cm in the headset.

I have a long history of horseback riding, so maybe that's where my heel drop comes from too! It just feels natural to crank out more power that way.

Good luck! It took me a long time, and it was just a fluke that a friend of mine at the LBS asked me why there were 175mm crankarms on my bike. I hadn't noticed that they were longer than they were supposed to be.