My Bike Fit Story
and the Women Who Shaped it.
While some may look at Endurance and see on the surface another 30-somethings white dude running a bike fitting service, I would like to highlight some of the most influential people in my education and career. Spoiler alert, it’s been predominantly women.
In 2010 I was new to the PNW and starting my physical therapy career in Seattle, WA. I found bike fitting as a niche within PT and signed up for BIKEFITs continuing education course targeting the PT and clinician. While I had been riding bikes my whole life I was GREEN when it came down to knowledge about bikes, components, and certainly fitting. Honestly, there could be a dedicated blog post about how comical it was.
But I only reveal that fact to highlight how amazing Paul Swift and Katrina “Kat” Vogel were in teaching me their approach to bike fitting. Paul, the charismatic face of the brand, taught me many of the hard skills of fitting including a stern request to “not strip my stem bolts by loosening them with the rounded end of the 4mm wrench.” While Paul brought the racer background, Kat’s messaging and communication particularly resonated with me as she was a physical therapist herself, a common ground in which I felt less green. That weekend she led this group through a series of decision making practices during the fitting of yours truly while getting my first bike fit. This course was capped with a deep dive into the complexities of cycling specific injuries and compensatory patterns. 4 years later I returned to BIKEFIT and my original mentors to complete the Level 2 advanced certification where I picked up more skills and refilled my enthusiasm through fellow cyclists, PT’s, and bikefitters. Much of what I learned through these courses I continue to utilize in my own bike fitting process.
Fast forward to my next PT position in Portland, OR where I met Chloe Murdock, DPT and saw the successful bike fit program she had developed and grown into a multi site specialty program. Chloe was a very accomplished bike fitter amassing hours of bike fitting experience well beyond my own and generously offered mentorship as I aspired to develop bike fitting into a greater portion of my own career. She helped me to take my training out of the classroom and to functionally apply it in a busy clinic. The time I spent as colleagues with Chloe was short but her impact on me persists to this day as I have followed her career and draw wisdom from content she has shared over the years.
Several years of bike fitting in the outpatient sports medicine facility went by and my experience grew. I used to track the number of fits I had completed with great detail hoping to achieve a big round bold number which would signify my accomplishment and somehow provide a sense of credibility. I look back at those fits and think about how little I knew relative to today. In the Summer of 2019 I was 8 years into the physical therapy profession and wanted to move further into the bike fitting profession when I left one position and met Endurance founder Annalisa Fish, PT, DPT.
At this point Annalisa had been building her own cycling centric PT practice in Portland for over 5 years and managed to assemble a team of PT’s and fitting specialists. I booked my own fitting and experienced first hand how Jacob Rathe and Annalisa worked together and talked through their ideas on how my fit might play out. While I was on the trainer as a paying customer, I knew it was the environment I needed to be in. Anna and Jacob played tag team co-fitting with me and spent genuine time reflecting, reviewing and dialing in a methodology. For me, the learning curve was steep again. It was like drinking from a firehouse with the knowledge flowing from that room.
Annalisa took a chance on me and I couldn't be more grateful for it. Whether she ever intended too she taught me much more than how to deliver an amazing fit. She got me on a new bike, schooled me on where fashion + function overlap (I am still learning), she showed me a glimpse of what it is and means to be a small biz owner in the cycling community. Ultimately Annalisa will always be a mentor who has helped shape my journey in bikefitting but this is only the tip of the iceberg of what I have learned from her.
This content was created on and inspired by International Women’s Day. The amazing and inspirational women who I have just mentioned are powerful voices in the world of bike fitting and I am grateful to have learned from each of them.
