My inseam seems to be 83cm. I measured it exactly as you described. I literally pulled up the book as hard as I could, it wasn’t pleasant 
That’s interesting about the Trek Bike size, it does look like Boardman are “missing” a size or something. Are Trek bikes the “go-to” bikes? I hear about them quiet a lot.
I live in a small area, there isn’t a bike fitter here, as far as I can tell anyway.
The axle of the pedal that it spins around, and screws into the end of the cranks.
Sorry - i meant the spindle (think that is what it is called)
it is the bit the pedal spins around that goes in to the crank.
This is how I set my bikes up.
I’m not a professional fitter.
I adjust seat height somewhere around the hteight that allows me to place my heel flat on the pedal with my leg extended and I not leaning to the side. You will never really pedal in this position, your just setting seat Height.
Move the seat forward or rearward to allow your knees to be over the pedal spindles when the cranks are horizontal. Make a plumb bob to help you gauge this by tying a nut to a piece of string and see how your knee and the pedal spindle line up.
Reach for your handle bars. Your hoods should be about shoulder width.
Assess how far you have to reach for your handle bars. If it feels to reachy, try different length stem.
You can also flip your current stem over. If there is a 10 degree drop, flipping it turns it into a 10 degree rise.
I find most bought bikes have the following errors in fit:
stem too long, stem flipped to drop and not rise, handle bars too wide.
The seat adjustments are always a user defined issue but the stem and bars mean you may have to buy a new product.
Don’t be surprised if after your fit improves you need a different seat.
I’m not a big person but I needed a slightly wider seat to properly sit on my sit bones.
I agree with everyone who has commented before:
If the bike is the wrong size, your better off starting with the correct size.
I would base this on the seat height required to get a good fit.
Needing a stem less than 100 mm does not mean the bike is the wrong size and we all actually can fit on a range of bike sizes.
It is never wrong to have a proper bike fit but some poor fitters may do little more than I outlined above.
I would add to the above advice that most/all of it is based on road bike geometry and bike fit.
stem length for flat bars is very different, hard to find much on hybrids but
stems like this are common on MTBs.
I rode a hybrid as a road bike for a good few years. Was doing circa 10k miles a year on it and even raced on it.
The geometry is way different to a mountain bike. You’ll get away with a stub stem on a mountain bike as the geometry and riding style allows but put that stem on a hybrid bike and disaster looms.
true - i’m not suggesting a stub stem but i think the wider handle bars allow for a shorter stem than you’d get away with on a road bike with thinner drop bars.
but not my area of expertise so happy to be proved wrong here.
[quote=“D, post:20, topic:604853, full:true, username:D_I”]
That bike’s front end is also pretty slack
What do you mean by slack? Is that a good thing or a bad thing lol?[/quote]
Sorry 
The fork of the bike slopes backwards - like this \ as opposed to more upright like this | and imo that will help keep it handling well even if you shorten the stem a bit.
It will raise your hand position, but it will pivot it back towards your shoulders. Take a look at this chart. You read it by starting in the bottom left corner. Follow the very bottom line out until you find “10”, which is in cm. Your stem is a 100mm, or 10cm. If your stem was completely parallel to the ground, you would have a 10cm ‘reach’–meaning that the handlebars would be 10cm out from the steerer tube. But now follow that 10cm point as you go up the other lines. When you hit a 25 degree angle (the line between where it says “20 degrees” and the line that says “30 degrees”, you can see that a 10cm stem is only providing 9cm of reach–only 9cm out in front of the steerer tube.
That final angled line, which would represent a 55 degree angle stem–the 10cm mark on that line is less than 60cm of reach forward. That brings the bars both upwards and backwards towards your shoulders.
You are right, the wider bars on a MTB negate the twitchy ride a short stem offers.
Hybrid bars tend to be inbetween road and MTB width.
I’d contemplate going down to 70mm stem length on a hybrid with regular width bars.
I cut mine down to almost road width and it was horrific. Had to alter ride position to fit a longer stem to regain compliance.
I measured again, I think 70mm would work for me in terms of comfort.
What would be considered regular width bars? The flat handlebars on my bike are 620 width
They’re standard.
Thanks for the detailed explanation!
I’m not sure exactly what degree my current stem is, but I’ll have a look. Is increasing the stem angle a normal thing? Like could it add any other unforeseen issues?
I might try a smaller stem then before returning.
The smaller frame is out of stock and it will take almost 2 months for it to be back in stock and have them build it. A long wait…
Will they let you use the medium whilst awaiting the final small?
I really do recommend getting the small. I’ve seen so many people buy a bike and regret it.
Hmm, It’s unlikely imo. But I’ll ask.
Is it possible that the small frame could feel too small as my height is on the edge and my inseam is slightly over the measuring spec that Boardman have?
In my opinion no. I ride a bike that as per the measurements should be too small for me but with a slightly longer stem it’s perfect and i feel much more in control of it.
The Boardman I googled came with a 7 degree stem, so there should be a lot of change you could make there if that’s what you’ve got.
Stem angle is a very common thing to use to adjust bike fit, yes. You can see in that chart, combining different lengths with different angles allow bike fitters to give a wide range of fits. You can change the reach (how far your arms have to extend) as well as how upright or forward-leaning your body is. Your local shop should have a number of options to try out.
I should add: swapping out a stem will change how a bike handles, so you’ll want to test ride a new one before committing. It may not change it enough so it’s a problem, but it will feel different to steer if you bring your bars either closer or higher or both. Different might not be bad, but it will be different. And Stuart is right, bar width can help with that as well.
You can visualize it this way: if you had a tiny set of handlebars 1 foot wide, and they were right at the top of your steerer tube (where your stem currently attaches), imagine how difficult it would be to steer that bike–the handling would be horrible. Now imagine a stem that’s 1 foot out in front of your steerer tube, with handlebars so wide that you could barely reach the ends. That would also suck for other reasons, lol. But it would steer like a yacht–not very fast/twitchy steering at all. So the farther forward and out you have your bars and hands, the more stable and slow your steering will be. But it can easily be too slow. There’s a bandwidth of comfort in there–it will depend on your size and shape and the bike, but I’d think from the measurements you posted that there’s at least a good chance you can find a stem that gets your bars closer to you without the steering becoming twitchy and unsettling. And maybe wider bars could help too, but that’s a step to take only if a new stem gets you most of the way there.
American MTB has gone “wide bar” crazy.
I ride the narrowest in our group at 680 mm.
I go back to MTB from the 80’s.
My stem is a 45 mm.
The bike fit algorithm is for road bikes.
Yeah, MTB is a different beast entirely. Short stems and bars wider than the moon. For drop bar you have to go to something like the Walmer bar to find anything close. And I don’t know a single person around here who rides drop bars like that. I think those are 750mm wide, lol.
As the stem gets longer, the bars can get narrower.
