My Fitting With Nate Loyal

As I mentioned in a previous post, I got a professional fitting done with bicycle wonderman Nate Loyal. Nate was a pro level bicycle racer, and has raced almost every form of bicycle you can imagine: Road, track, criterium, time trial, mountain, single speed mountain, 24 hour mountain. He is an overall madman and a hell of a nice guy.

I arrived at the fitting and instantly felt extremely confident in Nate’s abilities. This guy was no jokester trying to pose as someone who knew what they were doing, he is the real deal. He hooked my bike up on the fitting trainer, I hopped on and started pedaling. He and I started chatting about what my cycling goals are, what he has done in his cycling career, etc. All the while, little did I know, he was observing my every pedal stroke and analyzing my position on the bike. We ran through a series of me pedaling, getting off the bike, he adjusts something, I get back on and pedal, rinse and repeat. By the time he had finished with all of the measuring and adjusting, there was not an adjustable part on the bike that he didnt touch. He even spaced out my pedals from where they mount to the cranks. He informed me that the whole time I had been riding my bike, it was basically adjusted for someone else. There wasn’t a single part that fit my body. “It is going to ride like a brand new bike, you will love it”. I had feared that my spin was atrocious but Nate informed me that my spin was actually pretty good and to just keep practicing. He also said that my natural posture on the bike is perfect, nice rounded back and elbows slightly in. I was also encouraged to hear that my femurs are exceptionally long and when I need, I can really crank out some serious power to drop someone on a flat or bridge a gap (not that I am going to be racing road). Overall, I felt very encouraged about my progress on the bike, and my seemingly natural cycling disposition.

During the fitting, I told him that I have aspirations to ride the Furnace Creek 508 solo some day. It turned out that his girlfriend (at the time) had won the 1998 women’s division of the race, so he was very familiar with what it required. I think my desire to ride that event took Nate by surprise, he said “I am amazed that people still want to ride that event. It is totally nuts!”. I got talking with Nate a little bit about training, and something about the way Nate talks about it flipped a switch in my head. I think I am finally starting to wrap my head around the general theory of training for endurance sports. I may be slow to understand, but now that I starting to see the light, I am very encouraged and excited. Obviously the conversation we had was very general, but something about it gave me a real desire to train like the big boys.

One of the things he mentioned seemed like pretty good advice “You have to watch out for the nutty advice you get about training, especially in the ultra world.” He and I joked about the various goofy “methods” we have heard about from the ultra world. When it comes down to it, you can’t beat a good old fashioned structured training plan. The pros use structured training plans and hard work not because it is some obsolete tradition, but because it works. He said “If you want to ride like a real cyclist, you have to train like a real cyclist”.

Part of me actually wants to solicit Nate’s services as a cycling coach, so that he can get me on the right path. I feel like I don’t want to waste any time riding like a rookie, I want to train and ride like a real cyclist.

Nate, expect a call.