Welcome to “Perfectly Fit,” our newsletter which is designed to help you get the most out of an active, cycling lifestyle. I have a team of pros from all over the world that will help me provide you with great info and a place for you to find out what you want to know. Your feedback is so important and we will make a place for you to be heard.

I don’t have customers or clients, I have friends. Today I want to feature a great guy, Mark Crosno. He represents the best in all of us (and way better than most of us!). Without friends like you and Mark, I would not have a job and I will be featuring friends like you periodically.

The next Fitting Trip is scheduled for March 20th-23rd in Dallas, at the Cooper Fitness Center cycling studio. The following trip is scheduled for March 28th-29th in Houston and then April 3rd-6th back in Dallas, depending on demand. Let me know if you need help with fittings or planning your next dream bike. The best suggestion is to email Kevin so we can make an appointment. The Cooper Fitness Center is at 12200 Preston Road in Dallas. It is at the back of the Cooper Aerobics Center complex. The cycling studio is the first thing you see when you enter the Fitness Center. They will provide locker facilities and I promise an awesome experience.

In our Q&A section we have one question to answer this time. It deals with the best way to visually determine what gear you are in while riding.

Cynthia Heinz will add her woman’s perspective as a new cyclist, discussing success.

Don’t forget to visit our blog as new stuff is posted there almost daily. It is easy to subscribe to the blog so you can get updates sent to you.

Thanks again for letting me share with you a little about cycling. I respect your time and will strive to continue to make it worth it.

Our every other weekend trips to Dallas are getting back on schedule. If you want me to come to your city and do fittings for you and your colleagues, contact me and we can arrange it.

Dallas Fitting Trip, March 20th – 23rd. Fittings will be held in the Cooper Fitness Center in the spin classroom.

Houston Fitting Trip, March 28th – 29th. Contact Kevin for location.

Dallas Fitting Trip, April 3rd – 6th. Fittings will be held in the Cooper Fitness Center in the spin classroom.

This comment comes from Tom McKenzie who sent it via facebook:

Kevin, I recently became aware of an accident in San Antonio where a cyclist was struck by a car and suffered extensive injuries. On investigation of the matter, it was discovered that the driver had minimum liability coverage and the injured cyclist had minimum uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage and even with combined coverage the amount is not sufficient to cover the damages. I know you sell high dollar cycles with a commensurate customer base. In connection with your sales efforts, I would encourage you to encourage your customers and our fellow cyclists to talk with their carriers to determine whether they have coverage for these types of situations and to maximize their coverage. UM/UIM coverage costs pennies on the dollar and could be a life saver, especially in San Antonio with its large population of uninsured drivers.

Tom McKenzie

Thanks Tom. Underinsured and Uninsured Motorist coverage is critical for everyone whether they are driving a car or riding a bike. I posed this question to Barry Bibb, my State Farm Insurance agent, who added his perspective.

Good morning Kevin……Mr. McKenzie raised a very pertinent issue and he was very much on track regarding the potential coverages that would come into play. Specifically, if the driver of a vehicle is found to be at fault in a collision with a cyclist, the driver’s liability provides the coverage for the cyclist’s injuries and property damage. Liability coverage (which is required by law) is usually expressed with three numbers such as 25/50/25. In this case 25/50/25 is the State minimum coverage that can be purchased. The first two numbers represent the “bodily injury” level. In this example, $25,000 for bodily injury for one person and $50,000 (cumulative) should more than one person be injured. The third number represents the amount of property damage protection that is afforded which would cover the damage to the bike.

There are, of course, higher levels of protection which we highly recommend. Examples of common combinations of liability coverage are (but not limited to) 50/100/25, 100/300/50, 250/500/100 etc. Unfortunately, even though the law clearly states that a vehicle owner must have liability insurance in force in order to drive on public roads, the sad fact is that a very high percentage of drivers are actually uninsured……..with some estimates as high as 40%+ in the Bexar County area. To complicate the situation, many of those drivers that ARE insured, actually carry the minimum limits (25/50/25) which frankly will not go very far in covering serious injuries and/or property damage.

So, to be specific, if you are a cyclist and get hit by an uninsured driver, your own uninsured/underinsured vehicle coverage will protect you up to the limits you have on your own policy. In the event you get hit by a driver that is insured, but his liability limits are insufficient to cover your damages, then the cyclist’s own uninsured/underinsured coverage will pick up the difference, but only up to the limits of your own policy.

Particularly with medical expenses as high as they are today, it behooves everyone, cyclists or not, to review your vehicle insurance coverages with your Agent to make sure you understand how they protect you and to adjust the levels of coverage to fit your individual needs.

Thanks, Barry and Tom!

I think that all of you would agree that today’s economic times are unprecedented in our lifetimes. We have much uncertainty and the stresses of everyday life are greater than ever. I subscribe to a blog by Seth Godin who has pearls of wisdom every day. I was up early this morning with a little writer’s block and as if by magic, Seth gave me a quote.

“All around you, people are telling you two things:

1. Whatever you want, forget it, it’s impossible, and

2. Sit still, preserve resources, lay low.

And yet, the people who are succeeding, creating change and (not coincidentally) are happier aren’t listening to either of these pieces of advice.”

I am so fortunate to meet people like you every day, who are using the bicycle as a success tool. You are defining the bicycle as not only the Fountain of Youth, but are getting mentally tougher, fitter, smarter and better able to thrive in an environment that is draining and petrifying the rest of us. Let me tell you a story about Mark Crosno who is typical of most of my KGS Bikes friends.

Mark found me a couple of years ago and after getting fitted for and taking delivery of his Parlee Z1, used the improvements in his position to start riding with younger, fitter and faster riders. Mark is 52, the same age as me, and recently went on a training camp with Category 1 bike racers. He is a perfect example of an individual who grabs life by the horns and goes for it. What is so cool about Mark, however, is his ability to bring all the rest of us with him by lifting up others, helping, teaching and encouraging.

I spent a weekend in Houston recently and met Mark’s beautiful bride Julie, who is on the pathway to a better fit on her triathlon bike. Julie is just as charming as Mark and she absolutely blew me away when she held over 400 watts on the setup bike after her fitting. Both Mark and Julie are strong and fast enough that they could blow us mere mortals off the road with ease, but they don’t. They hosted my fitting session in their garage and invited their friend Jennifer over who got the same fitting treatment that Julie did.

I was so impressed with the quiet calmness that these humble athletes possessed and the contrast with so many other arrogant, elitist athletes that we all have seen. This inclusiveness, combined with guts and toughness, gave me the inspiration to share a little of my experience with them and write about it.

The nuts and bolts of this conversation is this: When the going gets tough, the tough get going, and the really tough inspire us to join them! Mark, Julie and Jennifer are not listening to the media saying things can’t be done. They are not sitting still, either. They are taking the tools they need and living life to the fullest. Remarkably, this appears to be one of the keys to succeeding when everything around you seems insane. These fine people are examples of the Fountain of Youth, but they take it a little further. They invite others and inspire them to better themselves.

I met another of Mark and Julie’s friends today, Jim, who came into the studio when passing through town. He described how Mark encouraged Jim to transition from running alone to cycling and possibly triathlons. Jim’s twist on the story is how he describes the way that Mark showed him how to ride fast in a good pack of riders. I preach to every triathlete that they will be faster and safer riders by learning the secrets of the bike racers. It takes a lot of patience and explaining to help a newbie understand that going faster and smoother could be much safer than a slower pack. Jim is a believer.

In closing, I am constantly amazed by the caliber and quality of my clients who really are friends. Thank you for inspiring me to do not only my best but to improve on a daily basis to make your life a little better.

Until next time,

Kevin

President

KGS Bikes

This week’s topic is ‘women that cycle are more successful’. I know that’s quite a bold statement, but it’s one that holds an awful lot of weight. Success is directly proportional to effort + capacity + efficiency. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about success in marriage, raising kids, running a multi-million dollar business, or doing all three, success can be defined by those three main traits. So the key to being more successful in life is to increase these variables.

There is not another sport out there that harnesses a woman’s unique power-to-weight ratio in a more ‘efficient’ manner than cycling. A female rider doesn’t typically have as much weight to carry up a hill as her heavier male counterpart. This is a huge advantage because it evens out the playing field much more so than in running or swimming where raw power wins every time. Even with less muscle mass per gram of body weight, a female has a huge advantage. Furthering the advantage, most females don’t give off enough of a draft for a male to fall in behind her, but a female can stick like white on rice to the back of a male rider and her male counterpart won’t be able to drop her. This woman has increased both her capacity and efficiency exponentially by taking a relative ‘weakness’ and turning it into a major advantage, and then utilizing someone else’s strong suit (male power…draft) to make her even more efficient.

Now let’s take that same scenario back to the real world. Ladies, could we not use some of our feminine wiles or ‘weaknesses’ (like our proclivity to chatter), and turn them into huge assets? Study after study has shown that women are better communicators than men, yet most of our motivational speakers are men, most of our community leaders are men, and most of our corporate execs are men. Why is that? Let’s harness our abilities and turn them into strengths. Volunteer to be the leader in your church group, speak up at the next PTA meeting, or run for office…get out there and turn those weaknesses into powerhouses. Then utilize the strengths of others to make you more efficient. When you come home after work, are you rushed to help the kids get their homework done, fix dinner, get the house cleaned up, and spend a little time with your husband? Of course you are! There aren’t enough hours in the day for all that.

Take a lesson from the women cyclists…use someone else’s efforts and efficiencies to conserve your energy for the important ‘uphills’, like spending true quality time with your family. Hire a maid to clean the house or an assistant to help you manage some of the more mundane tasks you do at work. If finances are a struggle, get creative! How about trading off kids and cooking duty with the next door neighbor? Mondays and Wednesdays take their kids for 2 hours and cook dinner for both families. Your neighbor and her husband then have two hours of alone time before you return their kids and an amazing meal for their dinner table. Tuesdays and Thursdays switch duties and take some special time to work out or spend with your hubby. It will reduce your stress to come home to a clean home or a warm meal and give you much more time at a fraction of the cost of your personal time.

Here’s to your success!

Feel free to drop me a line anytime or send questions to: cynthia@kgsbikes.com

Dear Kevin,

I still have trouble with gears. I don’t know what gear I am in and it frustrates me. I don’t know the difference between the gears on the front or the back. If I can’t figure this gear thing out, I am afraid to leave the neighborhood.

Davida

Hi Davida,

Thanks for writing. The first thing you need to do is to learn to look down between your legs so you can actually see where the chain is on the cogs. I have gone into the mechanics of counting teeth and gear ratios on previous posts but I believe we can make this simple. First, you need to simply ride around in a big parking lot where you know that it is safe to take your eyes off the road, just for a second! What cyclists do is learn to scan very quickly and accurately assess traffic, things in the road like debris or potholes, proximity to other riders, and among other things, whether the road is about to go uphill or downhill.

Let’s break down what you are doing into small chunks to make it easy. First, develop a little mental checklist when you are going to look down to check your gears, grab some water, whatever. The first thing you do is to actively look forward and to the right and left and make sure it is safe to look down! Once you have done this, you can confidently steal a quick glance down and then immediately look back up to see if anything has changed in front of you. At first it will be a little scary taking your eyes off the road and that is why you want to practice in a parking lot. You want to be able to repeatedly check, look down, recheck. This will assure that when you look down you are not going to get a big surprise. Don’t forget to check the road condition as well during this exercise as it would be pretty embarrassing and possibly painful to check for traffic and miss a pothole!

Most people master the first part of this process fairly quickly. The second part is to learn to recognize what you are looking at. When people struggle with gears, I find that they usually don’t really understand that the chain is being derailed from one cog to another in the back or from one chainring to the other in the front. What you are looking for is a quick confirmation of where the chain is! I like to do two quick peeks, by the way. I peek down between my legs at the front chainrings and confirm if the chain is on the big ring or little one. I then look up and double check the situation for safety, then look down again but this time further back to the rear cogs. If you look for the chain you can see if it is near the spokes, an easier gear, or near the dropouts, a harder gear.

The harder gears are for going fast on the flats or downhill and the easier gears are for going uphill. You will learn in due time what grade the road is compared to what gear you are in. The whole point of these gears is to allow your legs to work at an efficient RPM which is about 90 for trained cyclists. Some people will spin at a higher cadence, up to 110, which is better but usually takes more training.

I hope this helps. Thanks again for asking.

Kevin

We only recommend products,  services or companies that we have actually tried or worked with personally. A recommendation, like a reputation, is very important and we do not take this responsibility lightly. The following links are to our friends at the Cooper Aerobics Center in Dallas. Dr. Kenneth Cooper is considered “The Father of Aerobics” and has put together a group of world class companies that have a direct impact on us as cyclists and as professional people:

Cooper Complete – We have arranged for 10% off anything you buy from Cooper Complete if you put “KGS” in the coupon link and then “recalculate”.

Cooper Clinic - The world renowned Cooper Clinic is starting to create medical exams and services aimed at professional adults who ride bicycles.

Cooper Fitness Center – The Cooper Fitness Center has a special strength training introductory program for cyclists.

These links are to our frame builders and other providers that make KGS Bikes the premiere fitting studio and cycling boutique in the world:

Co-Motion Cycles – We’ve long enjoyed a reputation for building tandems that simply handle better.

Guru Bikes – Our approach is based on combining the best of both worlds: cutting edge technology delivered by hand and with an old school attention-to-detail.

Lew Racing – Lew Racing has achieved a following among racing cyclists because of the wheel’s tremendously high strength, low weight and the meticulous attention to engineered performance inherent in its design.

Parlee Cycles – Simply put, PARLEE frames are the best built and best riding carbon fiber frames available today, at any price. They are functional works of art.

Rocket 7 – Since 1999, Rocket7 has been handcrafting cycling shoes in the USA with the finest materials available.

Sem Custom Paint – Dave Sem is the best extreme detail painter in the world.

Serotta – Only Serottas have the extensive engineering of our proprietary Colorado Concept tubing design. It’s the foundation behind the unique ride of each and every Serotta.

Source Endurance – They are teaming with us to provide physiological testing, data analysis, training consultation and long-term coaching. They have two state-of-the art labs, one in Austin and one in San Marcus. We are proud to recommend them and invite you to check them out.

Storck Bicycles – Numerous innovations in frame and component design that are standard in the industry today were developed, patented, and introduced by Storck Bicycle.

Tacx – Home of the Fortius Virtual Reality trainer. This is the trainer component of our “Ultimate Spin Bike”. Tacx also makes many other fine products. KGS Bikes is an Authorized Tacx Testing Center.

Topolino Technology – Our wheels embody this ethic: A fundamental redesign of wheel construction to take advantage of extraordinary materials with amazing properties, yielding a wheelset that performs like no other.

Zinn Cycles – For more than a quarter of a century, Zinn Cycles have been working to make cycling more enjoyable for customers, and that commitment remains at the heart of everything they do.

KGS Bikes is known around the world as the premiere bicycle fitting studio and cycling boutique. Kevin Saunders, President, has over 25 years experience in bicycle fitting and high-end bicycles. He also has a broad knowledge of anatomy, structural engineering and industrial design. In addition to fitting services, KGS Bikes sells bicycles from Parlee, Serotta, Zinn, Co-Motion, Storck and Guru. They also feature Lew wheels, custom shoes by Rocket7 and the best available components from around the world. Visit kgsbikes.com for more information, including beautiful photography of the bikes carefully created for their owners.

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