Size UP or DOWN? What To Do If You're in BETWEEN Bike Sizes

there's probably a pretty good chance that most of you fall in between a size range and by that i mean between the small and the medium between a medium and a large i personally am a medium and this really makes bike purchasing really complicated because you definitely don't want to buy the wrong size bike because you've spent all this money there's a bike shortage what are you going to do in this video i'm going to share with you some things i've learned being in between sizes to help you guys make a better bike purchasing decision okay behind me i've got two bicycles i have a crest bambora in size small and a bear claw thunderhawk in their size 52.5 which would be the equivalent of a crest bamboor in size medium i brought these two bikes out because it'll give you a good sense of what to expect if you size down as opposed to sizing up one of the big challenges of sizing is body proportions not everybody's bodies are proportioned the same way so for example i'm 5 8 which is a pretty average height for a male in the united states however my inseam length is 29 inches so that means i have the legs of a much shorter person one of the old rules of thumb of bike sizing is standover height so you know what that is you prop the bike up you throw a leg over and you make sure that you can lift the bike up and there's some clearance and that works if you have normal height to leg ratio but i do not so even on the size small i don't have the recommended standover clearance and this has been kind of the bane of my bike riding experience i tended to put more weight over standover clearance and because of that i tend to size down when i'm stuck in between two frames which is pretty much all the time the downside however of doing this is you do end up with a lot more spacers under your stem i mean personally this doesn't bother me a whole lot but but for some it might and some people just feel compelled to point out the number of spacers below your stem so that's why recently when i purchased the bearclaw thunderhawk i bought a size up a 52.5 which when you compare it on bike insights is pretty close to the medium-sized bamboora the end result of that is that i'm running fewer spacers i think the bike generally looks a little bit more balanced the downside however is again because of my short legs to my height ratio i have like zero standover in fact this is kind of gently prodding me upwards when i step when i straddle the bike so you can see it's a balancing act between standover height and enough stack so you're not running like a ton of spacers and reach so you're not running a super stubby stem so reach is this horizontal measurement and although it's fixed you do have a fair amount of flexibility in increasing or decreasing the reach and and by that i mean you know stem length your handlebars ad reach as well as the brake hoods so while reach is fixed it's actually pretty flexible stack height however the measurement that kind of determines how high you can get your handlebars without putting a ton of spacers below it is kind of harder to fudge with first off if you've got a bike with a carbon steer tube you probably only want to take it so high before it gets too dangerous too much excessive force that might break the steer tube you have a little bit more latitude with height with an alloy steer tube if you really want to get your handlebars high definitely look for a fork with an alloy steerer tube not a carbon one so back to stack and reach in terms of frame size so here i'm looking at the crest bambora in size small and medium and just isolating stack and reach and what's interesting is that between the two sizes even though you went up a full size that reach number only increased by four millimeters but the stack increased by 23 millimeters so what that tells me is that if you like to have your handlebars in a fairly upright position it might be worthwhile considering sizing up again in that example you gain over 20 mil of stack you can run less spacers the bike's going to look a little bit better proportioned you will have to kind of negotiate that standover height issue however so let's look at the geocharts for the bombora and the bear club as you can see the reach difference between the small bambora and the 52.5 bear claw again increased by just the tiniest bit at 3.4 millimeters the stack however increased to 17 millimeters so almost 20 ml and you can kind of see how that plays out in the build fewer spacers in the front slightly less seat post showing in the rear like i mentioned earlier however i have no standover room on the bear club but i'm okay with it i'm okay with it and this is why so for me i'm going to treat the bear claw mostly as a all road bikes and be riding paved roads gravel roads and because it is an all-road bike i think standover is less of an issue unlike would say a mountain bike or a drop bar mountain bike where i'm going to be taking it on more single track or technical terrain where i may have to put a foot down really quickly that's when i would want more standover height however since it's mostly going to be like a road bike for the vast majority of time i probably won't be dabbing my foot or having to put a foot down very quickly that's a compromise i made with this bike and i'm completely okay with it if you're going to be riding a bike on generally non-technical terrain and won't have to do super quick dismounts then then sizing up might be okay this is the size medium of the tumbleweed stargazer and there's a couple things going on here first you can see here i have fewer spacers than i have on the bear claw and that is because this bike has a lot of stack to it so that means it makes it really easy to get the handlebars nice and high if that's what you want one way you can mitigate this whole standover issue thing if you're going on technical terrain with with a bike that is slightly larger is if you look for a bike with a sloping top tube this would buy you some of that stand over clearance that you don't get with a horizontal top tube bike so while i'm pulling random bikes out of the garage i'm gonna talk about one more thing which i'm sure someone will ask is what do you do if you're gonna be using an alt bar that sweeps back if you look at the drop bar bike you know clearly you've got a stem moving forward and then the handlebar that pushes you forward still and then your shifters with a flat bar bike or an all bar bike you can see that the handlebars are going to be working to move you backwards and to counteract this typically you'll have to run a really long stem so this is 120 and you might also have to raise the bars a fair bit to get it comfortable what does all this mean in the size discussion if you're stuck between two sizes and you're going to run a sweat back bar definitely choose the larger size this will help with the reach a little bit but definitely the stack height so to summarize if you're in between sizes and if you value standover height over anything else then size down however if you know that you're going to want to raise your handlebars you know fairly level with the saddle if not a little bit taller then consider sizing up you'll run fewer spacers granted you'll lose that standover height but in the long run it will make it easier to get the bars up if you're going to be doing lots of technical riding where you have to get off really quickly that may be not a good idea look for a bike with a sloping top tube or if you're like me and you know that bike is going to be used mostly on road and you've made the piece of sacrifice and stand over height for a better stack number then size up hopefully this video was helpful and not too confusing let me know your experiences if you're caught between sizes do you size up or do you size down who else is this medium puts medium in the comments i'd love to know if you like this content consider supporting the channel by joining us on patreon that is the best way it gives us a budget so we can make two videos every single week like clockwork plus you also get some awesome perks from lots of brands that we work with as always everybody keep the supple side down

Channel: Path Less Pedaled

Views: 48,727

Rating: 4.9382081 out of 5

Keywords: bicycle touring, bikepacking, bicycle, travel, tourism, ride, adventure cycling, pathlesspedaled, the path less pedaled, bike touring, bikepacking gear, bike gearing, roadslikethese, gravelspecific, partypace, gravel bike

Id: xciHoxCJyms

Length: 8min 2sec (482 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 21 2021