Aerobars

I personally find that aerobars make a differance. I ride a set on my road bike.  I can get 1 to 1.5 mph speed gain by just dropping onto the bars.  But, I ride on mostly flat roads and have had lots of time to get used to the bar before a race situation.  

If I were you, I would not put the bars on the bike for the race this weekend. On a 40 km ride you could  get the same results if you ride in the drops every now and then. 

 Mike

Tough to quantify exactly for you -- however, if you have been riding without them then it is the single greatest thing you can do to speed yourself up.  Suggest that you set them up very wide for first usage -- try them out before your race as handling takes time to get used to.  

Cheers,

g

Until recently, I rode a road bike with clipon aero bars.  A couple months ago (in order to mitigate the cost of purchasing a tt bike), I had some work done to my bike.  The first thing I did was to have my bike fit.  This was great as I could now remain in my clip on aerobars for an indefinite amount of time.  This gave me the bug to have aero bars with bar end shifters installed.  This was even better because I could now shift without opening the sail to reach for my shifters.  I added a set of Zipps and had a great race on my road bike with bar end shifters and Zipps.  In fact, it was so great that I decided to bite the bullet and buy a tt bike which is a lot of fun.

I guess what I am trying to say is that there is a lot of things that you can do to become faster but it is important to make sure that you are comfortable with your equiptment.  Only you can be the judge of if you have enough time to reach that level of comfort.  If possible, I would have a fit specialist take a look at you on the bike with the clip-ons before you use them.

Sidenote:  About a week after I had the bar end shifters installed, I T-Boned an SUV.  Luckily, the SUV didn't T-Bone me.  I must admit that I was having a lot of fun going faster with my fancy new setup before that happened.  BTW....My shoulder took a beeting but the bike was ok (thank goodness).  Best of luck with your next and all future races.  Please accept these words as those from a fellow beginner.

Good advice Mike.  Racing this Sunday is a little too soon to get comfort with aerobars.  It took me about two week to feel safe, but now I never use my regular bars unless I am shifting or braking.