Plucking the Grey Hair

When I walked into Ed Schums house today, I noticed it was almost like a ski lodge in the Alps. He has wooden figurine carvings on the walls mated with old faded pictures of he and friends skiing in the Alps and mountain ranges I'll probably never see.
I also noticed what I had been secretly looking for to confirm my thoughts on those pesky Germans.....a huge beer stein.

I wanted to see Ed because he knows about bike fit and is from the old school of cycling. He knows his shit. I was surprised when he fitted me on the compu-trainor to help me get into position. We did a few tests before he took any measurements and I found out that each of my legs are equal in force...meaning they pedal 50/50 within 1%...which is really good. The problem was that my leg efficiency sucks the big one!

I was pedalling at about 65% efficiency. Ed says hes seen worse, but it can still be improved quite a bit. Mountain biking is terrible(I'm told) for developing cadience efficency, I figured SS riding would be even worse, so I didnt tell him about my past.

To put it in perspective, Ed hopped on MY bike...and pedalled his 60 year old legs with MY saddle height and angles....with old man slippers no less and got 75% efficiency. Crazy German.
So, he took about 20 measurements, and we changed some angles and moved my seat fore ward 2 cm, and moved it down 1 cm, and it felt quite a bit better. Only by adjusting it by a few centimeters it improved my pedalling efficiency 5-8% which puts it at respectable.
These little adjustments may not seem like much, but if my saddle was 1cm too far back, and causing 1mm of damage to a muscle every rotation of the pedals, then think about 90 revolutions of the pedals in one minute......times 210 minutes(4 hour ride). That equals 18900 pedal strokes in that ride alone. That's a lot of damage to your main muscles.

I went on a recovery ride after the fitting, and although the bike now feels new and weird again, I think it'll be much more efficient.

(Note: I found out later that Ed doesnt drink)