If I remember right Emilio did test the tops or tri suits. But I don’t think the full results ever got released. He may come on here but I think they were in the middle of he road with the sleeved tops.

There was a Facebook post on it but I couldn’t find it. I don’t remember if he posted it on his name or the De Soto Page.

It is just their newer normal skin cooler fabric, it doesn’t have all the ripples and thesdesigns that some companies are spending wind tunnel time on to design so it’s not too surprising if it didn’t match up with the top suits.

Just curious where this consensus comes from? Again, I'm talking short (OLY) course racing. And yes, no observation bias.....actually looked at the top 10 finishers, both male and female.....not just the six podium winners. Actually surprised to see so many sleeveless at a 70.3. (started a separate topic on this subject)

Have been in the same boat as you. Actually, I just outright can't justify/afford a Tri bike for only 1-2 races a year, so I've modded my roadie... The vast majority of benefits come from just putting your body in an aerodynamic, comfortable, powerful position, not from the frame itself. Look at that head-on picture of yourself. Nearly all the surface area is you, not the bike.

Here's my list of must-dos if you're fitting aero bars to a road bike:
1) Seatpost. Tick, looks like you've got an offset post rotated forwards.
2) Saddle. What are you riding? You seem to still be a fair way back on it. Something like an ISM, with long rails, slammed forwards, that you can sit on the nose of, will help move your hips forward, and also allow you to rotate your pelvis down without squishing your squishy bits. You just want to rotate your whole body around the bottom bracket, not fold yourself up tighter.

Once you've done that, you'll be able to drop the front end lower with:
3) a properly slammed stem. Find a long, high angled MTB stem and run it upside down. BBB BHS-25 or a Cinelli Pista for example. Remove spacers where necessary. Find a shorter headset dust cover to get really low.

If you're happy with that position then as a final kicker I would add a flat base bar, TT brake levers and bar end shifters. Makes life infinitely nicer when on the aero bars, improves the drag slightly, and makes swapping the cockpit a simpler process because it's all pre-assembled and pre-aligned.

Things like deep wheels are cool, but lower bang for buck. They do have the benefit of being transferable to a new bike though.

I know that's rough - but its way overstated for an Olympic distance. I'd be able to take 10 mins off compared to a road bike ? I just don't buy it.
Everything mentioned is likely to be faster than the standard - but not by that much.

My first reaction to your fit is that you are on too small of a bike and even moving a bigger road bike would yield a better position. You just look really cramped and could benefit from more reach (and given you are already running a decent number of spacers the increase in stack won't be a deal breaker). While you are considering swapping bikes I might also look at going to a shorter crank arm so if you do go lower you won't cut off your hip angle.

Here's another way to think of it... a 2.5 MPH speed increase will save you 10 minutes in an Olympic bike. So, you think that going from a standard road bike with a normal helmet, normal clothing, stock tubes & tires, and normal wheels to a fully optimized setup will not give you another 2.5 MPH? My first-hand experience is that all this is worth at least 3 MPH.

Back in the days when tribars first came out - we slapped them on our road bikes. No other changes.
We didn't have power but it seemed like they made about 1.5 - 2mph difference compared to riding in the drops. That's about 5 minutes.
I can't see another 5 mins from the other changes.

It’s all there. Google Tom A.’s work analyzing rolling resistance of good tires and tubes. Look at Flo’s analysis of deep carbon wheels versus box rims. There are a number of great studies published about clothing and helmets. Plus, here are a few articles that summarize all of the above into simple tables.

just my personal n=1 experience. raced the same course, a 13 mile sprint, in '14 and '15. in '14 i had a basic road bike set up, roadie helmet, aero nothing, no extensions. The bike fit was optimized for the drops to race triathlons, and I was in the drops 95% of the time. that winter i bought my tri bike, a TM01, hed 9's F&R, A2 helmet, optimized fit, fairly good position, kiwami tri suit. I dont recall any big wind difference or anything, the roads were wet from dew with the second race with the tri bike. both bikes raced GP4KS2s with latex.

road bike = 21.3mph on 241Wavg, 249np
tri bike = 23.2mph on 229Wavg, 238np

after a year and half of dialing in the position, in the '16 chicago tri I went 24.8mph on 227avg, 238np

so moral of the story, that tri bike eventually gained me 3.5mph.

I can do 24.5-25mph on around 210-220 watts with my race setup. There is no universe I’m doing close to that on a regular road bike not decked out. It makes a huge difference and has for a long time, there is just a ton of windtunnel data out there now.

how are your transitions? It takes a lot of practice to swim 45s faster in a sprint race or can cost $$ to be 45s faster on the bike. Can some people pick up 30+ seconds by focusing on transitions without costing a nickle or changing their diet? Defintely!

---

Great things never come from comfort zones.

did you ever see a pic of luc van lierde or dave scott?



these super fast race times were on bikes with drops (luc had clip ons) and box rims and non aero helmets (and dave also had shifters on the frame) - and the records stood for decades until recently

The key feature of a tri bike is aero body position not aero frame parts - so the cheapest and fastest road bike to tri bike conversion kit is :

move seat forward (seat nose forward until past the bottom bracket) this mimicks the steep seat tube that makes aerobars comfortable and saves your hamstrings for the run...
you might need a triathlon seat post - like Profile Fast Forward post




Get the low aero bars
for high road bars usually you need clip ons with pads as low as possible - preferably pads that can be mounted in front or behind the clamps on the bars as low as possible....you can work towards shoulder and elbows at 90 degrees when you sit on the front of your seat with your back flat and parallel to the ground


usually the road handle bars need to be moved as low as possible to make the aero position posible - with a adjustable stem you can do this over a period of weeks - making it lower and closer as you get used to it - until sometimes you even have the handlebars lower than the headset level (like perpendicular down in some cases)



Then after that if you are serious about budget aero - you can install mountain bike thumb friction shifters (like 20bucks) so you can shift in aero

OP can also put the aerobars under the base bar, yes it's a tight fit. But will drop him much lower. I have had both bikes. If anything aero helmet was biggest speed gain

depends on a great many things..
I went from a Trek 2500 with tri-bars and forward saddle to a Cervelo Dual. All the components moved over from the old frame to the new so there were no changes there. The Dual was not measurably faster at first but once I'd adapted to a lower position it was faster. Placebo effects are also possible, and will make you faster ;-)

A lot of great answers and plenty of food for thought for me, thank you all! Actually now I consider working on my current position and maybe just buying the new wheels. I will probably eventually buy the new bike in the future anyway, but maybe I will save some more money and buy some non-entry level bike in the 2019 – I'm planning to move to longer distances then.

@exxxviiii


Thanks for clarifying the info concerning the latex tubes, I will definitely try them in the upcoming season!


@MattyK

1) Yep, rotated offset post.

2) Specialized Phenom moved as much forward as possible, The photo was taken when I was first sitting on that saddle I think that now I am a little bit more forward on it. But thanks for the advice, maybe I'll try to borrow some ISM saddle (or similar one) and test it.

3) I'll try to remove the spacers to get the stem lower first, than maybe I'll try changing the stem. Thanks!

@scott8888

Hmm, might be the distorted photo perspective, I am 180 cm (5'10''~) and my bike is M – 56 according to Canyon's sizing, I feel quite comfortable on it (however I have quite good hip mobility). Guys that I know who ride 58 frames are at least 5cm higher than me, but of course I know that the sizing differs between the brands. Noted on the crank length, thanks.

@Barry s.

My transition times are usually comparable to competitors from my level, and if there are some PROs in the field they are 15-30s faster than me. I do the flying mount and dismount quite well, but I think I can improve the way I take off my wetsuit, and try to run a little bit faster in the zones ;). So I agree, there are still some really “cheap” seconds to gain there.


First I think I will lower my stem by removing the spacers, then maybe I will try with some further modifications.

@lacticturkey

Seat is already past the bottom bracket. Thanks for the rest of the hints that you've provided, I need some time to digest and try to implement them.

The gains are overstated. You need to be comparing the road bike with clip ons to the tt bike. The advantage of clip ons is huge. I did a sprint this year on my road bike and was only 1 minute slower than the year before on the tt, without a disc wheel or aero helmet on the roadie. Flat course. No way it is 10 minutes over 40km once you normalize for aerobars.