bike fit – Seven Cycles

Are women different?

In some ways, it’s a trick question. When you build bikes one-at-a-time for the person who will ride them, every one of them is different. But asking how women, as a general category of rider, are significantly different than men is a good way of understanding the particular value of a custom Seven.

Kelly Catale laughing while posing with her Kellcat SL

Again generalizing, women vary more in body proportion than men do. A woman of average height will have an inseam measurement that falls in a much wider range than a man of average height. Reach varies wildly, too, and those are just two of the more critical ways we think about fitting a person on a bike. It is also true that the industry doesn’t make stock sizes small enough for a fairly large percentage of women.

In fact, most women who don’t conform to the averages (and there are more of them than there are of men) have never ridden a bike that BOTH fits well and handles well. To make a stock size bike fit well, radical adjustments may need to be made to stem length and/or saddle position, and the result is overwhelmingly a bike that is too twitchy, not much fun to ride.

At Seven we control the variables. Bottom bracket drop, head tube angle, fork rake, not to mention seat tube length, stem length, etc., it all feeds into what will be a great riding bike for a rider of any proportions.

Women are not different in the sense that they want to feel confident on the bike. For far too many, a stock bike won’t get them there, and their cycling experience will be compromised. We take great pride in being able to deliver exactly what they need, regardless of size, proportion, or preference.

Protected: Night and Day – Made to Fit vs. Built to Fit

Future Leap

We had an email from a rider currently in the process of getting a Seven. He had questions. A lot of them. And chief among his concerns was how we could possibly design a lifetime bike for a rider who would, himself, change over time.

These are legitimate concerns, and we put a lot of time and energy into exactly these challenges. People’s bodies do change over time, for better and for worse, so when we propose a design, that design has to be as durable as the frame materials we use. It all has to last a lifetime. So what do we do?

For us, all the variables are within our control. Head tube length and angle. Seat tube angle. Head tube extension. Unlike stock bikes, which have fixed geometries and only get adapted to a rider with spacers and saddle placement and stem length, we are starting from the rider’s perfect position, with everything centered over the wheels and no adjustments necessary. So, we start with that advantage. Once we arrive at that position, and our partner shops are good at finding it, we design so that the bars can go lower as you get fitter and/or higher as you get older and less flexible. Building in that flexibility isn’t difficult, as long as you are starting from the right point.

All of which brings us to the very idea of comfort. When it comes to your comfort, you are the expert. You either feel good or you don’t, and no fitter should tell you that you are in the correct position if it doesn’t feel correct to you. A first custom bike can be something of an epiphany. We realize that we have always been adapting to bikes, sometimes in big ways, sometimes in small ways, so we are used to being uncomfortable.

The first spin on a custom bike you think, “Oh, wow. Everything is in the right place.”

We can’t stress enough that your comfort is something you feel, not something a fitter or bike designer can prescribe. That’s why your time with a fitter will be so important. The fitting gives us that good starting point, and our personal interview with you provides us the context to understand how flexible our design needs to be. We have built 30,000+ frames this way with excellent results. We know it requires a leap of faith on your side, but we have the data to suggest it’s not as long a leap as it appears.