marcosero,
I really appreciate you working with me on this here. Don't hesitate to get back to me with more questions if you have 'em. I want everyone who buys a bike from Canyon to have confidence in what they are getting, and the info you've been given is not building confidence. I'm sorry about that. I want to give you everything I'm considering hoping that you can mine-out the info you need to move forward.
I took the what you gave me: height, inseam, short torso, poor hip flexiblity, first tri bike, etc and put into into my "system". My system uses both a mathematical formula and my history as a bike fitter (100+ year over 15 years), bike fit instructor & consultant (lots of interaction/discussion with other fitters), triathlon coach (20+ years full time), triathlete (~220 triathlons over 25 years) and came out wtih a gues of your Pad Y and Pad X. Other professionals might shy away from the term guess and would go with something loftier like hypothosis or estimation - sure, it's both of those too, or we could call it a guess.
Then I took that Pad X/Y and plugged it into a really serioius xcell spread sheet that I use to determine what Speedmax somebody should be on. That spreadsheet is way, way, way over my head. It was built by the lead Speedmax designer at Canyon. It's the same device (is device the right word for a spread sheet?) I've used to prescribe every Speedmax disc bike over the past 4 years (there's over 2000 posts on this thread + the prescriptions I've used it for out of my own fit studio and over the phone with other fitters/athletes).
Is there noise in this system? Yes and let me break it down for you:
- My guess of your Pad X/Y might be off. Not way off but off by a little bit - and that's okay because I won't offer you a bike that is painted into a corner. You'll have room to move the pads up, down, fore, aft to find a spot that you'll love.
- Canyon's numbers might be off a little bit. Not way off but off a little bit - just as an example: the link you sent me to EU's Canyon Geo page shows the Pad X parameter as measuring to the center of the pad. Well, we don't do that anymore, we measure to the back of the pad. My assumption is that the designers described what they wanted to the graphics person and after a few back-n-forths and corrections they all got tired of trying to make it perfect and said "close enough" let's move on to the Lux Trail mountain bike or one of the other...what? 50 models they make. I trust the designers spread sheet over the graphics.
Are there safeguards to protect you from the noise? Yes and let me break those down for you:
- A medium CF comes with an 80mm stem. If you can't find your perfect pad fore/aft from moving it all over the holes in the pad and the holes in the bracket (it's a big range; 70mm by my spreadsheet, 53mm by the Canyon link you sent) you can get a 70mm stem or a 90mm stem expanding the range of that bike to a dimension that would exclude you from being considered a normal human. And I'm cool with abnormal humans too.
- Canyon has what? a 30 day, no questions asked return policy. If the bike you get simply can't reach the place you want to ride then send it back and buy a large or small. That's really rare and it's rare because a) the bike has range and b) there are folks in their customer service dept that know and care and there are folks like me out here helping who know and care.
I don't want you to think this is an issue with d-to-c sellers of bikes. This happens in brick-n-mortar bike sales too - sometimes worse. If you were to walk into any common bike shop and say to the staffer "I want to buy my first tri bike". I think is possible that their thought process might be:
he looks about 6 feet tall, probably needs a 56 but maybe a 58, at the meeting last night the manager said we were long on 58s and there's a bonus for anyone who sold a 58 this week.... Staffer says "step right over here my good man, I've got the perfect bike for you". There's only one way to guarentee you get the right bike and that's to be FIT FIRST. That means go see a bike fitter who is educated in tri bike fit, experienced in tri bike fit, and has a dynamic fit bike. They gotta have all three. You hop on, go through a process where your feedback and the fitters skill - both- drive the fit, and in the end you get a Pad Y of 668 (ugg, 2 mm off my projection) and then a Pad X of 453 (darn! 3mm of my estimation). Those numbers prescribe the bike size, the front end details.... and you get numbers that no one at their key board can give: seat height, set back, cockpit distance, pad width, aerobar tilt, etc. etc. etc.
In the pic below there's an X, it's where I think your pads will be (in my spread sheet). That X sits almost dead center in the Medium CF and it sits in the extreme corner of the Large CF.
There's one last item I'll offer you.... you are I are really similar: same height, same morphology (short torso). My Pad X is very close to what I prescriped for you and my Pad Y is a bit lower. I'm probably as flexable as you are but I ride with 165mm cranks and that's what allows me and everybody else who rides short cranks to ride lower in the front end. I found my spot because I was FIT FIRST by Dan Empfield the inventor of the tri bike (and father of this site) and then I tweaked and tweak and tweak my position over the years because I'm into bike fitting, I'm a pretty good mechanic, I've got parts all over my fit studio, and listening to classic rock while wrenching is my thearpy. Even now, at 55 years old, I can't ride the same arm pad elevation I used to so just recently I raised 'em a bit to ease the lack of flexibilty in my aging cervical spine. And... I ride a size medium Canyon Speedmax CF.
That's it. That's pretty much my entire brain poured on on the screen for you. I hope that's enough for you to buy with confidence.
Ian
Ian Murray
http://www.TriathlonTrainingSeries.com I like the pursuit of mastery
Twitter - @TriCoachIan