Marcos,
That is what I ride, and I'm very happy with it. I have long legs/short torso and it is a good match. It won't be the reason you don't win the race. If you want very steep, you probably need to go elsewhere. I've never had a problem running off it. Simon Lessing won IMLP with one. You can get some great deals on them right now. Good luck!

kdw
mafia member

Marcos, as some here know my 13 year old son won the National Championship in Mexico on such a bike. I will gladly try to help you in that matter.

If you do a search on this site you will find plenty information. As a reference below some photos of the bike ridden at the Nats.

If you want to get low on the Soloist you should check also this link http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...%20nationals;#941857

Best wishes,

Sergio Escutia





Below the same cycle ridden at the Road Cycling Nationals.

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Note: English is not my first language. Please read this translated post considering that.

Marcos,

I've fit about 6 Soloists in the past year and 4 of them were for triathlon. You can rotate the clamp on top of the seat post and get it into a great spot for triathlon. If there was one bike that could "go both ways" this would be it. It's a great bike to set up with two posts & two seats: one forward with a tri saddle and and one with the clamp back with a road saddle.

You can do very well with this bike.

Ian

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Ian Murray
http://www.TriathlonTrainingSeries.com
I like the pursuit of mastery
Twitter - @TriCoachIan

The following is from Cervelo's website (if anybody should know, you'd think it would be them:

Answer - Soloist for TT/Tri use

I have to start by saying that this is rarely the best option, a dedicated TT/Tri bike will usually give you better performance and more comfort thanks to their dedicated geometry. The steeper seattube, shorter toptube, headtube and chainstays all give you a better TT/Tri position on the bike and better handling when in that position. The Soloist Team is the best road bike available to turn into a TT/Tri bike, but it remains that, the best ROAD bike to turn into a TT/Tri bike.

But that aside, here are the issues. It really depends on how often the TT-road switch is made and how often you use the drops position of your dropbars. If you use the drops regularly and switches often, then clip-ons and STI are the way to go. If you don't switch over and want to go to bar-ends, then the bike becomes more or less a full-time TT/Tri bike anyway and the aerobar options are completely open. Thing to consider:

1. The drop from a clip-on aerobar to the drops of a dropbar is very large, so large that for many people the drops are useless and they only use the hood position. This hood position is effectively what you have with a TT/Tri base bar (also called pursuit bar).
2. This means that if you want to use the drops at a reasonable height, the top of the dropbar is relatively high and therefore it is important to use aerobars with very little stack, i.e. aerobars and elbow pads that sit as flush as possible with the top of the drop bars.
3. It also means that if you don't do that, the drops become useless and you may as well switch to a pursuit bar and save the weight and drag as well as switch to reverse brake levers instead of regular brake levers.

Bottomline: If you use the drops often and want to continue to do so, get aerobars with a low stack height. If you don't care about the drop position, get a base bar and virtually any aerobar (integrated or not) and you'll be fine.

I bought the Soloist a couple of months ago for Tri and road.

I tweaked a bit the configuration changing the seat post to the carbon version and changed the fork to the Wolf SL. Overall it brought the weight down and the comfort factor up.

It was not as comfortable as the Soloist Carbon, but not in the same price range either. The wife would have been pretty upset if I came home with the carbon ... (boy that red looks good though ...). I think overall a good compromise between price and performance.

The bike climbs great and accelerates nicely. The bottom bracket is really still and when you are grinding up the hills it won't give up on you.

Enjoy !

pdg

Would you consider using a Cervelo Soloist aluminum bike as a tri bike?

Sorta, depends on your position and how much work you like. I did in 2005 while in limbo b/w selling my tri bike and receiving my new one. It worked fine EITHER as a road bike OR as a tri bike, but certainly not both. While is seems easy to just "toss on aerobars and flip the seat", there are other consideration. The seat collar (seat height) and seat wedge (flip seat) are weak and prone to stripping w/o the use of a torque wrench. Not to mention any up front that needs to change.

IMO, it's not a 2 trick pony. It's a GREAT road bike that can easily be set-up for a slackish tri position. Or, it's a decent tri bike. Not both.

How steep could you get on one?

Depends on your saddle rails and seat height. At 76cm saddle height on a 54cm frame with an Arione, you're looking at 77ish.

marcos, do you want it for dual duty with road bars and clip ons? I know a lot of guys doing this and ths is the best bike for it IMO. Do you want to set it up with a basebar and aero bars? Why? Cheaper? Do you have a short torso? Could be good as long as you don't want to be super steep and can get a good fit.

Dan
www.aiatriathlon.com

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http://www.aiatriathlon.com

That's what I do. I like it because I spend around 90% of my time riding it in the road position. Basically, when I've got a race coming up I flip it around, put the aerobars on, do a couple of test rides, then race it that way. I usually take the bars off the night of the race.
Takes me around 15 minutes to switch it around (definitely get 2 seatpost heads - the clamps are the dumbest things I've ever seen on an expensive bike).
If I wanted to permanently mount my computer on the stem, it would take a lot less time.
So, for a road bike that you can do the occasional race on, it's great.
But if what you want is a tri bike, I'd say get the dual, or of course the equivalent bike from another brand.

-charles

sergio, your kid is my idol even though he's younger than me (i'm 14.) sweeeet setup. i heard that a bottle on the down tube is aerodynamic suicide but a bottle on the set tube is aerodynamic success, because it fills up a part of the triangle. just trying to help the fast get faster.

A few days ago I tried to fit two flat Arundel bottles inside the triangle but it is not possible, at least in the 54 frame. Maybe Gerard could build some frames with the bottle bolts in a position to fit two bottles of this type. I am pretty sure that the flat bottles will save some seconds on a long break away.

Sergio

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Note: English is not my first language. Please read this translated post considering that.

Hi,
Where did you buy the Wolf SL and how much did it cost? Do you have any specs on the SL? Is it carbon. I think I saw one on a soloist carbon but the fork looked like it was aluminum (may have just been the paint job).
THanks\

When I bought the bike I asked the shop to equipe it with an SL. You are right, the Soloist Carbon comes with the SL as a standard fork. Cervelo has 3 types of fork, CL, TT and SL (Super Light). The CL is aluminum and the TT and SL are carbon The bike shop took the CL as an exchange and swapped it with the SL. I think I paid an extra 90 USD for the trade in (although I'd have to dig through my receipts to figure out the exact value).

Looking at the Cervelo website I figured I saved about 120 g on the swap.

From the Cervelo knowledge base "For the Soloist Team, Soloist Carbon and SLC-SL the choice is pretty simple; the Wolf series of forks has the best aero shape available and passes all the tests Cervélo has for fork and fork/frame combos. Depending on your budget, you can opt for the Wolf CL or SL. The Wolf CL has the strongest steerer in the industry (hence the CL or Classic name) made from TrueTemper's newest ultra high-strength Platinum OS material. The lightest option is the Wolf SL, 320g without sacrificing strength or stiffness."

The CL fork weighs in around 440 g.

Have you taken out the bike for a test ride ? What do you think ? For an aluminum frame I was quite surprised how it dampens out the road. It was not as rough as I was expecting.

pdg

I'm thinking the his seat is too high...........

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