Time Trial Bike

Mike,

 Thanks for sharing this link.  The article was very informative.

 Mark

Time Trial bike is same as tri bike from what I know.

Time trial bike is what road racers use for time trials which is actually the same concept we do in tris...test of how fast we can go over certain distance then we get to run afterwards.

Many of the racers in my bike race team have cheap time trial or tri bikes as they don't ride them often and when they do they ride shorter distances...aero is more important than comfort.

Tri bikes or TT bikes can be fit to an individual based on type of events they do. My tri bike was fit for me given my A race was a hilly Ironman so it was not set up very steep or low front end. If I was going for shorter races or flatter my bike fit would have set it up with a lower front end.

What kind of bike do they have?

Yes, a TT bike and triathlon bike are the same although a bike used in a triathlon may be set up less aggressively than a bike used for a pure TT due to the need to run after the bike leg in a triathlon.

For example, the Felt DA is used in the professional peleton as a TT bike (eg. by the Garmin Chipotle team) and also by pro triathletes (eg. Tim Deboom).

There are a couple rule differences too, if you look at pro TT bikes and Tri bikes. One of the big ones is that the UCI rules state that the nose of the saddle must be 5cm behind the bottom bracket. So you see a lot of riders waaaaaaay up on the nose of the saddle, or just riding saddles with the nose chopped off. There are also rules about aero bar angles, yadda yadda.

 It seems that most elite-level TT guys are adopting the steeper seat tube angles these days for the sake of aerodynamics, though, so the bikes seem to be looking more and more the same.

For instance, here's Dave Zabriskie, who holds the claim for fastest TT in the history of the Tour de France. His P3C's seat angle is at 78 degrees too, and he's much further forward on the saddle, making it more like an effective 80+ degree angle.

Here's TT world champion Fabian Cancellara. He's a little further back, but you can see that his and Dave Z's positions are pretty similar: