I'm not going to tell you to upgrade everything to carbon fiber, or not upgrade anything, but carbon fiber is approximately 3 times stiffer than aluminum. This depends a lot on the grade of carbon, resin used, direction of stress and the layout pattern of the carbon fiber. There are a ton of variables that go into carbon fiber, which is one of many reasons it is so much more expensive than aluminum or steel. Will you be able to shed 15 pounds off of your bike by switching components to carbon components? Absolutely not, but you will shed some weight. Another thing to keep in mind is that carbon fiber is excellent at absorbing road vibration whereas aluminum is not. That's why even a lot of entry level road bikes use a carbon fork and aluminum frame.

If you have the money to spend on it, it's a nice upgrade to have, but it's not going to make you a significantly faster rider. If you're stretching to make the upgrades, then I'd definitely revisit your strategy. Either way, you should also focus on your race weight.

You'll see more performance gains from a 15 lb weight loss than any number of carbon widgets you put on your bike. But, nothing wrong with giving your bike some love too.

Focus on aero on the bike, not weight. Ultegra is a great groupo. Unless you're a watt weenie chasing rolling resistance gains you're not going to benefit from upgrading your components.

Losing 15lbs would be a massive performance increase.

If you buy bike upgrades, buy aero upgrades, not weight upgrades.

Bike weight will have almost no impact on that course.

Body weight will have a ton of impact on your run.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

if the upgrades make you think you are faster, then you will be faster.
I changed my tape once and it matched my bike and suit better, I had less training, and was faster.
Could be something else, but i am convinced it was that lol. Losing some weight really helps though.

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Swim with swimmers, bike with cyclists, run with runners. Train with those who are hard to keep up with. Soon you will be hard to keep up with.

carbon fiber is approximately 3 times stiffer than aluminum.

In stiffness and strength vs weight a decent carbon composite usually comes out ahead on bike parts, but it is a small difference.

I stopped eating so I could afford upgrades :)

jaretj

Focus on body weight first as this will have an impact on your health and performance. Have a plan in place for the upgrades and/or a goal in place but do yourself a favor and research what you want to upgrade. Maybe if your target is 185 lbs, you can research some upgrades and when you hit a 5 lbs lose you buy an upgrade. Always go aero first but if there is a aero upgrade that is lighter, I always lead myself in that direction.

15 lbs weight lose is like losing the complete bike or close to it.

Weight loss by a fair bit could make you faster by hours.

Aero upgrades on a bike make you faster by minutes.

Weight savings on a bike make you faster by seconds.

As soon as I read the thread title, this is what I thought is the solution to both.
As Jack said, upgrading to carbon is nice and all, but losing 15 lbs will help bike and run instead of just bike. Of course, it's probably easier to buy things than lose weight.

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IG: idking90

Weight loss will significantly improve your run times. It will have little if any real impact on you bike splits, unless it's really hilly, you don't know how to pace, and there's a sharp turn at the bottom of every climb and you don;t get your energy back.

Carbon is more for bling than anything. Get it if you've upgraded everything else, have a coach or just want a really sweet looking bike, regardless of how fast you are or are not.

Its the motor and the position, and you overall size, not the bike material. Spend 2x more than what I have now, would probably save me about 2' at most in an IM.

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TrainingBible Coaching
http://www.trainingbible.com

Reward your weight loss with even more weight loss... I said that if I got to 185lbs this year I'd be riding a new Speed Concept at Whistler... And oh does that f*cker fly now that I'm down to 185lbs.... I can't wait to see what happens when I hit 178lbs with another 15-20 watts of power...

Thanks everyone. I've heard that people on slow twitch can be a**holes but I've learned more from a couple of things that I've posted than weeks of research on my own and everyone has been totally nice.

It's always fun to upgrade if it doesn't put you into the poor house. If the upgrades motivate you to put in more miles in training, then it is worth it. Powermeter is the best investment for the bike if you don't already have one. They are a lot more affordable these days. Losing weight will always be part of the 4th discipline(Nutrition).

Pushing the fork away is so much cheaper than making your bike lighter. However it's not as much fun.

I tried to apply the anti-gun rational to my diet. I figured the fork and spoon were causing me to eat so much so I just removed them from my house. There is just no way it was me doing the eating. Had to be the fork and spoon. Didn't work out that way. I still ate. Darn. Was so hoping that I wouldn't have to hold myself accountable and responsible for my actions. :(

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The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

People think that way about this place because nobody sugarcoats anything. It's not handed out with a lollypop like some other boards I've been on.

The weight loss from the body will be huge. Anecdotal (And my own n=1 experience) evidence is 2-3 second per mile faster on the run for every pound lost. So if you lose 15 lbs, you're gaining about 40ish seconds per mile for the same effort. That would be close to 9 minutes saved for 13.1 miles. (Obviously said gains will be larger at the lower end of the scale, no pun intended). Additionally, with the weight loss you also present less of a profile to the wind on the bike which will help as well.

John

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Top notch coaching: Francois and Accelerate3 | Follow on Twitter: LifetimeAthlete |

Maybe that's why a lot of gun nuts are so fat. Not only do they believe that it's their right to carry a gun anywhere they go but they
are also probably carrying a fork and spoon.

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Find out what it is in life that you don't do well, then don't
do that thing.

Way to bring politics into a triathlon discussion. Take it to the lavender room. No one wants to hear how much you hate "gun nuts". I 100% support the right to carry. Does that make me a gun nut? I don't carry a fork and a spoon and I am very lean. Leave politics out of this

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Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/

You joke but have you seen some of the what do you carry everyday threads where they mean other than your gun? Some of them do actually in fact carry some sort of eating utensils at ALL times..

And for the record in many instances it is in fact their right.

Weapons of Mass Consumption!

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Travis Rassat
Vector Cycle Works
Noblesville, IN
BikeFit Instructor | FMS | F.I.S.T. | IBFI
Toughman Triathlon Series Ambassador