Alexey Borisevich: Bike fit, rim width and how the Belarusian bike friend lives

Guest

Useful from the issue

1. Do not overstate the saddle

   A saddle that is too high is the most common landing error for sports cyclists. The heel-on-the-pedal rule simplifies the task too much.

2. The size is better a little smaller

   With a borderline frame size, it is better to take a smaller one. The main advice before buying the first expensive bike is the right loan.

3. Check the width of the shoes

   Stand with your bare foot on an insole made of bicycle camouflage: if the foot goes beyond the edges, the shoes are narrow and can cause numbness and burning.

4. Burning in the fingers — see the lower back

   Burning pain in the little finger on a long trip is often associated not with a shoe, but with an overstressed lower back, which squeezes the nerve roots.

5. First, a rehabilitologist

   If you sleep only on one side, cross your legs or unevenly stomp your shoes, it's worth going to a sports rehabilitologist at least once.

6. Gymnastics every day

   Simple exercises like brushing teeth — squats, push-ups, swings, rotations — over the years makes the body more mobile and better able to carry the load.

7. Choose a tire together with the rim

   On a wide rim, the tire opens more square: 40 mm on a 32 mm rim gave more contact spots than 47 mm on a 25 mm rim.

8. A road bike needs a clearance reserve

   The gap under 32-35 mm allows the road bike to survive the bad asphalt and soil on the route without suffering.

First the body, then the bike

Alexey does not like bike fit on templates and sensors and does not consider himself a fan of millimeters. The main tool of the fiter, according to him, is the head and knowledge, and the product is the effective and healthy biomechanics of a particular person with his limitations. He even formulates a provocative thesis: a physiologically healthy person hardly needs bike fit, over time he himself will come to a balanced fit. The problem is that there are very few such people — almost everyone has a difference in leg length, functional imbalances, the consequences of injuries and improper training.

Therefore, he speaks more about "bodyfit": first to deal with the body, then to adjust the bike, otherwise there will be no long-term result. The body, Alexey explains, uses strong muscles more and more and weak muscles less and less — like a teacher who has been calling only excellent students to the blackboard for years. The lower back often takes over someone else's work, and the middle gluteal muscle turns off. It's never too late to work on physiology: there are improvements for clients of any age, but this is a game for a long time.

The main landing errors

The first error in frequency is a saddle raised too high. Alexey considers the popular way to set the height, resting the heel on the pedal, to be too simplistic, and, according to him, no one really justified the usual figures of the angle in the knee. The second is that the frames are too big: the manufacturers' tables are averaged, and with a borderline size, men often take more, although a little less is better. The third is a too high steering wheel with a mountain of spacers under the outrigger. All three occur in about seven out of ten fitas.

Next are narrow shoes, spikes pushed too far to the toe, and widely spaced shifters. When the landing is improved, the first thing a person does is increase the cadence: the movement becomes cheaper.

Analysis: burns the little finger on the left foot

Ilya complains that after a couple of hours of driving, the little finger of his left foot starts to burn badly, and if you stop and take off your shoe, everything goes away. Alexey names three possible reasons. The first and, in his opinion, the most likely is the lower back: overstressed muscles can squeeze the nerve roots, and the burning sensation is given at the end of the nervous chain. The sign is a protruding pelvis in a normal stance.

The second is narrow shoes. The check is simple: pull out the insole, stand on it with your bare foot and see if the foot goes beyond its edges. The third is the position of the spike: if it is too deployed and the foot is constantly looking for a position, the little finger rubs against the shoe.

The tire is inseparable from the rim

The cycling industry, according to Alexey, is full of statements driven by marketing rather than experimentation, so any information needs to be filtered. For rolling resistance, he trusts independent measurements, and his observation with Borant was made when choosing rim width for his own gravel wheels. Gravel is a paradox: on essentially road rims, they put almost MTB tyres. It turned out that a 40 mm tyre on a rim with an internal width of 32 mm opens up more squarely and provides more contact area than a 47 mm tyre on a classic 25 mm rim.

Alexey's conclusion: it is no longer possible to talk about the tire separately from the rim, it is worth trying the same model on their wheels in different widths. Wide rims also allow you to put wider tires in the same frame — this is how Borant responds to the trend of increasing clearances, while not changing the frame. The brand itself once started with carbon wheels, and is now returning to them because it has not found ready-made ones with the right properties.

How Borant works

Borant frames are not catalog frames: the model is being developed together with the manufacturing plant according to the brand's technical specifications, from 3D rendering and printed layout to its own molds, and with such a logo this frame cannot be seen anywhere else. The factory is responsible for the quality, and the Borant team flies to the factory to check the batches. Alexey honestly recalls past failures: fragile frames, track frames without metal inserts in dropouts, the closed direction of city bikes, which could not withstand the fall in prices.

The brand really started to grow about four years ago, when the family closed retail and distribution and completely went into their bikes. Now about 80% of sales in Russia are gravel, in Belarus the proportion is about 70 to 30, and Russia this year for the first time equaled Belarus in terms of volume. There are no triathlon bikes, because it is almost impossible to compete with giants in this segment, and the track direction is being curtailed. In five years, Alexey wants to see regional showrooms in Belarus and Russia, but he does not plan to go to exhibitions — he considers the format outdated.

Why carbon fiber is expensive to make at home

When asked why carbon frames made in Russia are so expensive, Alexey answers with a chain. Civilian—class prepregs for bicycles are not manufactured in Russia and Belarus - they are transported from Asia. Precision molds need to be ordered from metalworkers, and when Borant once tried to make a rim mold on the spot, it could not be manufactured in tolerance. In China, everything is close: the mold contractor, the material supplier and the plant work as a cluster, and the state has been supporting exporters for years.

Without such an ecosystem and state support, each component has to be transported and paid for separately. For example, he cites an aluminum axle, which used to cost the brand about $ 7, and after 2022 has grown to $ 30. Therefore, the local frame manufacturer keeps on a high price, and Alexey treats him with great respect. His advice to those who want to open a bike business in 2026 is short: don't — although he himself dreams that there would be more domestic brands.

Gravel like a new road bike

Alexey compares the gravel with crossovers on the car market: versatile, lightweight, beautiful and passable enough. He believes that gravel will become the main type of amateur cycling, because such races are easier to organize, and the bike itself is suitable for more tasks. He recalls the classic road bikes of the past with wide tires, which were used both in the village and in the forest.

For road bikes, he gives geometry guidelines for size M: reach around 38–39 cm, wheelbase 96–97 cm, angles around 72 degrees, and, most importantly, clearance for at least 32 mm, preferably 35. A road bike, in his opinion, should handle light off-road: once he rode a gravel race with friends on 32 mm tires. In the end, Alexey admits he was surprised to learn that Tsar Grader is run by Ilya and his team, and says that Borant is thinking of coming to the race.

Timestamps

1. 00:00Acquaintance and podcast "Vzhuh"
2. 02:31Bike fit and its features
3. 06:10Bike Fit approaches and physiology
4. 11:22Errors in Bike fit
5. 13:47Burning pain in the little finger and lower back
6. 17:35Body, fit and rehabilitation
7. 25:14Triathletes, cyclists and the road market
8. 32:47New wheels and clearances
9. 37:40Tires and rim width
10. 46:42How frames are designed
11. 51:35Why carbon fiber is difficult to make in Russia
12. 1:05:01Brand history and ambassadors
13. 1:09:57Failures and closed directions
14. 1:15:35Gravel as the main trend and plans
15. 1:24:33Blitz: geometry, tips, conclusions

Mentioned in this episode

Borant · Borant Phantom · Tsar Grader · Russian Gravel series · UCI · Cycling Culture · podcast "Vzhuh"