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separate bikes for mountainous courses
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Does anyone ride a different bike When the race they are doing Has a lot of elevation gain. I am speaking in terms of triathlon only.
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Re: separate bikes for mountainous courses [Fishbum] [ In reply to ]
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I have a 70.3 with lots of climbing coming up. I'm going to use a road bike.
To be fair it's not just down to the elevation. It's also because I'm not travelling with my bike this time. I'll hire one there, and a road bike is WAY easier to set up for myself in a single test ride than a tri bike. But also, there's a long steep climb involved which I suspect would mitigate most of the advantage that a tri bike would gain elsewhere. I do intend to fit some basic clip-ons however in case there's headwind on the downhill!
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Re: separate bikes for mountainous courses [Fishbum] [ In reply to ]
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I've done races with a 2000 foot climb and I'm happy I choose my tri bike.

jaretj
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Re: separate bikes for mountainous courses [Fishbum] [ In reply to ]
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I've never ridden a tri bike course that would have been faster on a road bike, no matter the elevation gain... and I almost exclusively race events with lots of gain. About the closest I think I've came is Escape from Alactraz, mostly because due to the course design and congestion it simply felt safer on a road bike even though I know it wasn't actually faster.

In terms of simply using a lighter or different tri bike, I've never done that since I've never owned more than 1 tri bike at a time but I know people who have in a few specific scenarios. One example was a dude who rode his older tri bike with mechanical shifting instead of his new (at the time) P5 with Di2 at the inaugural IMLT because he could put a mid cage derailleur and run a 32T cassette on the mech setup but stuck with short cage for the Di2.
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Re: separate bikes for mountainous courses [Fishbum] [ In reply to ]
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The answer is that unless the course is Swissman or the Alpe D'Huez Tri the answer is take the Tri bike and if you have it, the take a disc wheel.

Anything other than a course that is up/down almost exclusively - take the Tri bike.
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