For my birthday Malwina paid for a Cyclefit session. It was quite interesting and after 2 hours with Warrick Spence measuring my legs and flexibility and observing me ride, I’ll be making some slight adjustments to my setup.

Overall I wasn’t too bad, somewhere around 75% efficient in both legs (aim is low 80’s) and of course I had some other quirks..

My legs were the same length but my left foot was 46.5 D/E and my right was 46.5 E, quite wide. My shoes were skinny (although quite stretched) 46 – too small.

More ‘interesting’ than that was that my muscles were tight – that’s not so odd – no, what was odd was that they were tight on opposing sides, ie. my left hamstring was tighter than my right but my left hip flexor was looser than my right! Poor Mr. Spence had to scratch his head over that one.

Also, my ankle/foot angle was high. Basically my ankles collapse inwards over my feet and this means when putting power through the pedals with a straight leg, my feet will be raised on the inside (the ball and arch). While pedaling, this results in a flattening and lifting of the foot within the shoe every down stroke – losing power. To fix this I plumped just under ?200 on new shoes (SIDI Genius 5.5 47 MEGA – the wide ones) with custom footbeds. These were molded on my feet using a funky machine. When trimmed down I jumped back on the SizeCycle and my pedaling was examined again. It felt a little odd my oddly enough more comfy than my well-used Shimano shoes. I kick my left leg out slightly at the top of the pedal stroke which again surprised Warrick because my back was stable while pedaling. He reckons it was some previous injury or compensation that I’d adjusted to. It was minor and my left leg was the more efficient one anyway. Over time, providing there’s no show-stopping issues, the new position and shoes should make for a more efficient and more pleasant ride. I will let you know if there’s any issues..

Living in London has turned me into some kind of fashion whore and so for once I didn’t buy the black version.. behold..