Adjusting Road bike for Tri

Sent PM.

Sent PM.

I guess my question is... How long is the race? For anything less than 1/2 Iron I don't see the need to make any adjustments. I used a road bike for a couple years before adding clip-ons aerobars.

If you're already dialed in on your road bike, you should be good to go. If you're looking at longer races, like 1/2 or full, then maybe getting clip-ons and a new fit would be useful. When I had the clipons installed on my bike, they did give me a new fit and made some adjustments which did help comfort wise.

--
Dave

Best advice for road bike in tri is leave it as is, and maybe add aero bars.
If you add aero bars, I wouldn't change much then either.

Those aerobars leave you quite a bit up. The idea is to get lower to reduce the area exposed to the wind.
You may be faster with your hands on the hoods or in the drops but trying to keep the elbows as they are in that pictrure

This is the fastest position you can get in a road bike. But it may be too constrictive at the hip for some people. There are fitting tricks for that. You should discuss them with your fitter




Edited by marcag 2019-05-21 1:26 PM






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Agree with Marq. My rig was a road bike with clip-ons for 5 years but I had a good TT type fit. It took a FF (Fast Forward) seatpost and longer stem but I got it dialed in pretty good.

I did not have the $$ to buy a true TT bike but I did have $275 to spend time with a good fitter and used some Retul analysis/data to determine the optimum fit, then got the aerobars, FF seatpost and stem to come closer to the ideal TT position. it was worth it, I was pretty fast on that road bike compared to other athletes on TT bikes.