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@nik
ok ladies, i have ridden a few of your bikes and some of you have ridden mine. its made me think that although bike fit is not an issue specific to you lasses, i am specifically concerned with how your bikes ride cos i love playing with you all and see some of you get frustrated because your bikes are limiting what you could otherwise easily do. here are a few 'trends' i think id like us to rid ourselves of:
big grippy tyres:
i think people started doing this cos it was stable and a ball under the wheel wouldnt send you flying. however, wider tyres are heavier/slower on the court (where its acceleration that is important). i ran 700x28c for a while and then fucked them up so put on what i had lyting around which was 23c gatorskins...super slick and quite light. they were fine with a ball under them and i found that with more acceleration i didnt need to worry about stability cos and i wasnt staying still as much! that said i do fall off a lot but thats cos i am a muppet not cos my tyres are narrow. now i have 26x1 1/8 which is like 25c i think id go narrower if io could. also, tyres with tred are not as grippy as slick tyres really as there is more contact with the surface with slicks. furthermore, th softer the tyres, the grippier they will feel, especially on slippy courts. i am using grand prix tyres which are folding tyre with a high tpi. theyre wicked. lots of brands do these kind of tyres.
stubby stems:
i think the reasons for this were to make the reach feel shorter and so, make you feel more upright and feel like there is more weight over the back wheel. it doesnt really acheive this as it is easier to acheive with geometry or at worst a laid back seat post. what you loose is weight over the front wheel which imo makes turning quickly feel really unstable and a bit fecking scary to be honest. so you'll find that you are braking while turning to freak yourself out less but of course that makes it easy to jack knife. not ideal. a longer stem with make the reach longer on your current bikes but, will put your weight over the front wheel making turning at speed more fun!
riseer bars:
again, these make you more upright whcih a lot of people like for shooting but again the side effect is that you are fuirther from the front wheel so that manoverability is compromised. i guess its a preference but when i changed tpo flat bars i jack knifed way less.
one last point:
gear ratios are very personal but it think its easy to assume you have a good one. i say we change it up! try outy a lighter ratio, it might feel faster! or maybe you have sprinter legs! try out a heavier one too! i know i relied on what the lads said then i put a ridiculously light gear on the other day and suddenly i could move! turns out ryan can push a heavier gear than me....somehow i was surprised...
obviously, all this info is relevant to some extent and often when people talk about bike set uyp they are talking about traditional set ups applicable to normal bikes but we all have other bikes for other purposes. a polo bike doesnt need to be comfortable like a commuter is, it has to work well on court, for ten minutes at a time. its worth bearing this in mind too.
all of the above touches on some opionions i have regarding our polo bikes and i posted it cos a few of us have been talking about it, not cos i think i know a lot about it, but because i am learning about it i thought this might be a good place to start talking about it together so we can all find a way to make the bikes we have do what we need them to do.
i love you girls, you are the most awesome, committed, chilled out bunch of lasses i have ever known and ladies polo in london is IMO the luckiest ladies scene in the world!