It's kind of a hard question to answer, and I guess it depends on what you are willing to compromise.


you can pretty much slap a set of aerobars on any roadie and it's going to 'work' and be slightly faster than jsut riding the drops (although it took me a long time to drop a guy on a straight up road bike at IMC last summer). Or you can jsut ride the drops or pull a Sparticus and lay your forearms on the tops and power away.


If you want to get some of the aero benefits of a Tri bike then you need to look at the aero road frames -S3, C1, AR, etc. you con't usually ride as low or as steep, but I found that the difference between my QR TiPhoon and my Litspeed C1 as far as stack and reach was pretty close depending on what I did for an aerobar setup on the C1. I couldn't get the C1 steep enough for my Long course likeings, but for a hilly sprint or oly the C1 woudl have been fine.

---

This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time. - Fight Club
Industry Brat.

I think a set of clip-ons, a forward seat post, and possibly a stem-flip would be the change you're looking for. Works just fine for me on my CAAD 5 Cannondale.
You're definitely going to have to redo your fit every time you change it back over though. I can never seem to get it changed back exactly to how I had it before - a week or so of tiny adjustments always does the trick.

---

---
U of N Alabama: Triathlon & XC

I recently purchased the profile T1 plus viper clip-on aero bars and fizik tri2 saddle for my Cannondale Cadd9 to accomplish what you have in mind. This is my first year doing triathlons as the previous 2 years, I've only raced in duathlons and participated in century rides. Having said that, I'm not experienced in fitting but when I did get fitted for my bike, I opted for the "moderate" approach since getting the said two items installed. So far, I've only gone on a few short rides and the position is definitely different but it's comfortable enough to pedal and talk and at the same time utilizing the aero bar seems to put my body in a better position to pedal. I think you can definitely accomplish this with just any road bike but you might need to swap out the handle bar for the aero bars to clip on.

---

2009 Cannondale CAAD9
2011-First year at Tri; 2012-HIM; 2013-IM

You need to do 2 things:

-get a forward angle seat post (Profile Design Fast Forward or similar)
-get a set of clip-on aerobars that reduce the effective top tube length of your rood bike, otherwise it is 99% sure you will be too stretched out and uncomfortable for any length of time. Profile Design T1 and T2 are excellent.

You might also consider:

-swapping out your saddle for a tri specific one as you will be spending lots of time ´on the rivet´
-flipping your stem and7or swapping it to get your handlebars lower.

Best of luck.

---

-------------------------------
´Get the most aero and light bike you can get. With the aero advantage you can be saving minutes and with the weight advantage you can be saving seconds. In a race against the clock both matter.´

BMANX

I have a Talon, just set up for tris but I did not cut the steerer in case I ever want to move the seat to the rear position and put on some drops. I'm sure if I wanted to use if for both right now I could get into a decent position with clip ons - then just move the seat/post to the appropriate position/height and add/remove spacers for the bars.

I think someone is selling a 58cm Cervelo Dual in the classifieds right now for a decent price. That is another bike that can play a "dual" role - and I think a couple of the new Cervelos are based on this as well but I don't keep track of that brand very well.

---

__________________________________________________________________
Eat right. Get lots of sleep. Drink plenty of fluids. Go like Hell.

In my experience, the S1 (as well as any of the Cervelo Soloist bikes) does a fantastic job of converting to a tri-bike when I need it to. [warning, shameless plug: I'm actually selling the bike here to update to a dedicated TT bike].

However, with a reversable seat post and a frame that is already aero, it only takes a few changes to convert from a road bike into a pretty top notch aero config. I'm a huge fan!

Cervelo soloist/S1 has worked well for me in the past. I put on some Vision bars and even went so far as to order a separate seatpost head from Cervelo and attached a second saddle to it. That way, I could easily swap out seats (one in forward position, one in rear position) without the need to flip the saddle around every time. Worked great until I decided i NEEDED a tri bike.

You're looking to do this, huh? ;-)

---

http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/

TitanFlex Transition

---

Formerly DrD