I would suggest getting fit for a time trial bike.

I can't imagine how crappy an aerobar setup you would need to be in order for it to be slower than riding in the drops because in the drops your arms are outside of the knees. Even a wide aerobar stance has your elbows aligned with the knees. This makes your frontal area smaller on aerobars.

Is this the sudden realization that cat 1/2 cyclists are faster than mid-pack triathletes or is there something else here?

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//Noob triathlete//bike commuter//ex-swimmer//slower than you

I'm pretty sure that "drops" means forearms close to parallel in the drops. Not sure many people who can hold that position for 180km. If you have a position on the drops where your elbows are straight or near straight then your bars are too low.

Clip on aero bars usually do not give a good aero position. Just a better position than on the hoods because of the stack height of mounting them on top of the bars. To get a fairly good position on a road bike you have to consider adjusting the bars and lowering them so the position of the clip ons is what you can hold for the race.
one option is to use and adjustable stem and try out various positions. also helps to have clip ons with a fair bit of fore/aft adjustment.

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______________________________________
"Competetive sport begins where healthy sport ends"

I think this is the most logical take away. It surprised me because I hadn't heard it discussed before and the popular data (I've seen) tends to not to reflect this.

Given Specialized test of drops vs. flat forearms, I suspect this test is flawed.

1. Generalised aero advice often doesn't apply to each individual*
2. Sometimes even generalised aero advice is wrong


* the take away being that the only way to know for yourself is to actually test the aerodynamics of each set up

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http://www.cyclecoach.com
http://www.aerocoach.com.au

Tests have shown that having your hands on the top of the of the brakes and having your forearms parallel to the ground is more aero than having your arms in the drops. Having your arms in the drops and parallel to the ground is not something that you are going to be able to hold for a long time so having your arms in the drops and angled back at a 45° degree angle is not going to be faster.

Aerobars if done right and with a very low stack height should be more aero than your drop position and most likely fairly close to having your arms on the top of the brakes and parallel to the ground.

Will waiting for someone to design a pair of drop bars with integrated extensions with a zero stack height. a nice aero drop bar with extensions. It could be done with something coming off the stem that bolts one with the extensions directly in front of the stem or something more creative. Just not a huge market really.

^^^^^This.

For any given athlete, their best sustainable aero bar position will be MUCH faster than their best drops position. This is why no serious triathlete or cyclist uses a drops position for a TT (uphill TTs being a possible exception). A great drops position might beat a horrible aerobar position.....but why would an athlete with the flexibility and core to hold a great drops position not have a better aero one?

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

While this is common nowadays, it is not a universal law and doesn't apply to everyone.

It's primarily the result of the bike fit trend of having road bike bars too low. In general that is.

Of the pros I have aero tested, being on the hoods is typically the best aero, while those pros with more old school sets up are more aero (and sustainably so) while riding in the drops. That's not to say the newer fit trend is bad but I do wonder sometimes why it's gone that way.

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http://www.cyclecoach.com
http://www.aerocoach.com.au

Thank you for your feedback and it would be great if you could post some pictures of the different set ups you are discussing.

From those descriptions you're not comparing the drops to anything even remotely aero:

Aerobars (Midpack Triathlete)
If you are not very flexible and have a fairly upright position

If you fit that description you won't be fast in your drops, either. So the positions listed aren't exactly apples to apples.

I was expecting this post to be accompanied by a picture of some guy riding with clip-ons higher than his seat and his back at about 60 degrees ;-)

I'm certainly quicker in the drops than on clip-ons, for the simple reason that all else being equal the drops position gets my body a lot lower. I.e. if my road bike is fit well, I'd have a horizontal stem with no spacers, and a drops position that allows me to get my back horizontal when I'm down there with bent arms. Stick a pair of clip-ons on top of that bar and I'm significantly higher, the only way I could get horizontal would be have a really stretched out position which is going to compromise my power, or dropping my bars using a negative stem, which would screw up my hoods and drops position.

Problem with the drops position is that your weight is supported muscularly instead of skeletally which is the case with aerobars. So it leads to a lot of tension in your back, shoulder and arm muscles which either means it's not sustainable for a long bike leg, or at least if you can sustain it you're not going to be in great shape to run.

Only if your bike fit is poor.

The amount of weight borne by the hands while on a road racing bike should be fairly minimal. Indeed you should be being able to relax the hands and all but be able to lift them a few mm off the bars and ride along in position without much trouble.

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http://www.cyclecoach.com
http://www.aerocoach.com.au

i took the liberty of lifting, and posting here, a picture (of you?) from your coaching site.



i'm pretty sure what what you say is true if the image is emblematic of how you actually ride (there is always a limit to how much you can glean from a picture).

if you ride the way most triathletes ride, what you say is NOT true, that is, what you say about road racing is true (not too much weight on the hands) but the weight on the hands would be SIGNIFICANT if you put yourself in the position most triathletes ride in and then took away the aero bars and held yourself up by your hands.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

It's neither a picture of me, nor is it a picture of a normal road bike set up. That's a dedicated TT bike.

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http://www.cyclecoach.com
http://www.aerocoach.com.au

i guess my point is, if that's a picture of a TT set up you admire i can see why a road set up hands on the hoods or drops would be no slower. both are quite rearward. you lose most of the advantage of aerobars if you ride a bike with aerobars that way.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

A strawman Slowman.

More specifically I don't even know who it is, let alone paid any attention to the position of the rider nor formed a view on whether or not I admire it. Ric Stern might know who it is if you wish to have a chat with them about their bike position.

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http://www.cyclecoach.com
http://www.aerocoach.com.au

My bike fit is good. Retul fit from an experienced and highly recommended fitter who works with both triathletes and roadies (and competes in both himself), and one of his stated goals was getting me more comfortable on the drops on my road bike (he set up my TT bike with an appropriately adjusted position as well). I spend plenty of time in the drops, but to get a really good aero position down there on a typical road bike fit you need to scoot your butt onto the tip of your saddle and get your back flat, and that does mean supporting a fair bit of weight through bent arms with no elbow pads. I can ride a few hours like that if I need to, but in road cycling it's pretty rare that you need to do that, and you certainly don't need to run afterwards.

Hoods position I'm totally with you. My butt is shifted further back on the saddle and I'm sitting more upright, so there's much less weight going through my arms.

"I don't even know who it is"

well, it's a picture on your site. if you don't admire that position, okay. point taken. i just thought that this image matched what you were writing here and that helped me make some sense of what you were writing.

there is no condition where a rider should abandon a tri bike with tri bike and a tri position for a road bike and a road position, with or without clip-ons, unless the entire bike ride either uphill or downhill or a mixture of both. i have fallen into the trap of thinking, "this is finally the course for my road bike" and every time i did that it turned out i'd made a mistake.

even in grand tours now it's striking the TT courses where the full-blown TT bikes are used.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Sounds good. A well fitted road bike that enables one to comfortably ride the drops for some time will likely mean the road bars are too high to be placing aerobars on top of them for occasional TT/tri use.

Well one could ride that way of course but you are giving away some pretty easy to attain aero gains by not at least using a different stem so the TT bars can be lowered.

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http://www.cyclecoach.com
http://www.aerocoach.com.au

For clarity, my comments were about road bikes and road bike positioning, not TT bikes or TT positioning, nor what bikes should be used for what.

I was simply explaining why it's often shown that being on the hoods on a road bike is more aero than being in the drops (on a road bike). That's because the positioning trend has been for the bars to be too low, such that riders can't comfortably adopt an aero position, the forearms are forced into more vertical position and that many have too much weight borne by their hands.

If you are racing tris, and that's the main thing you do or need to perform in TTs at the best level you can, then I agree and certainly recommend using a bike made for that specific purpose and which has been suitably set up for you. It would be a very rare tri/TT course where a TT bike would not be faster. MTTs perhaps, depends on the course and rider positional power and aero differential. Last year's 2016 Tour de France. Stage 18 ITT Megève we saw an wide array of set ups. Often not optimal and I agree that many would have been better served with a specialist bike and specific course training.

But if all you have is one bike, and it needs to perform a multitude of functions, e.g. maybe you only race the occasional tri or TT but also do road riding/racing and like heading out on your local group rides, participate in granfondos etc, then clips ons are helpful but to get most aero benefit it'll require use of a different stem set up if your bike fit is good to begin with.

There are a lot of people that want to enjoy the occasional tri or TT, are more participation oriented and don't see the need to drop a whole bunch of coin on a tri/TT rig. Swapping a stem and putting on clips ons and perhaps adjust saddle position as well will buy quite a bit of speed for not a lot of outlay. And you can save the money for doing other fun things, or family stuff.

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http://www.cyclecoach.com
http://www.aerocoach.com.au

okay. makes sense. i was commenting in the context of the OP's question. i don't have any
quarrel with what you're saying.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman