I don't understand why anyone cares.
If you are doing a TT or non draft legal triathlon why in the world would you want to push sti shifters through the wind?

IF there is a handling deficiency with a TT cockpit, design a better base bar.

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This may not be caring for most, but sure has, again, been some great thoughts from all sides. I love to do what if's.
Think I will stick with TT bars for now and change if I get into a DL race.

.

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

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Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

More about day to day riding, how many bikes one wants to own, and whether it's practical to switch in a full cockpit. Like I said, lots of compromises but I really enjoy my bike setup with drop bars and a road position with an option to go forward and lower.

Sure, let me find the link.


On a pancake flat, mostly straight race course? Not much. On a technical course with turns and a steep descent (and climb)? In my experience, the benefit is substantial.

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I raced the 2006 ITU course in Lausanne. Step hills, descents, cobblestones, sharp turns. Was on my TT bike with a standard base bar and shifters on the extensions. I can't recall feeling any lack of control on the downhills or issues with shifting at any point in time.

For pure racing purposes, I don't see any real advantages for using drop bars. If you are going to use a single bike for multiple purposes, I can see the benefit of having integrated brake/shifter setup.

Forget about aero for a moment. The biggest issue is FIT.

If you spend a reasonable amount of time in the drops, going from a base bar to drop bars means your hand position will be at least 3 inches lower. Unless you use LOTS of spacers of course.

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I think the effect of spending considerably time on a TT bike with base bars helps with the relative comfort of riding a technical course.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqyyNrOIatU

If you log all your miles, group rides, climbing, descending, wet weather rides, etc on a road bike then jump on the Tri rig for alcatraz or nice it would indeed benefit from being on the bike you are most comfortable with.
train what you race what you train.

-SD

Nice video Dave, and certainly illustrates a technical course, handled very well, by a rider comfortable with TT base bars.

I was there that day, and I remember the uphill cobbled(!) section, barely featured in this shortened edit. I was lucky enough to ride in the follow car behind Heinrich Haussler, who had focused on this stage and overtook several of his minutemen, finishing in 8th place on the day. I wish I had time to tell you all the tricks we did to help him, including how the follow car was driven (and which follow vehicle we chose to follow him in!). Someday I'll write it up. :-)

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True.
Except that, short of all of those people to avoid, that's a pretty easy course.

I guess I look at a technical courses as ones that have to have some major incline. Kinda like this at least, plus much worse asphalt:

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Um. That TDS TT route was incredibly tortuous in places. Don't be confused by the camera work.

http://www.steephill.tv/2009/tour-de-suisse/previews-results/stage-09/


And these guys are doing it at speeds that are mental to the rest of us.

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The question of who is right and who is wrong has seemed to me always too small to be worth a moment's thought, while the question of what is right and what is wrong has seemed all-important.

-Albert J. Nock

Sure, that might be, but I don't live out there. I am just going by the video; based on the youtube, it doesn't look that hard. The pavement, for example, looks to be flawless.

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Ah, yes, the ST way--in light of ignorance, wildly speculate that it's easier than your own experience and judge others based on that. Looking at that video, I have no idea what the pavement looks like--it's been blurred to oblivion. You're really going to stick to your guns on this one? The joys of motivated reasoning....

And I take it you didn't look at the course map I just linked to see the downhill stretches that had significant corners to them? Remember, these guys AVERAGED ~50 km/hr, including all those corners/uphills/etc. That's making me look like a complete piker on a road bike to what these guys are doing on a TT bike (which I really don't find any different handling on the base bar anyhow...)

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The question of who is right and who is wrong has seemed to me always too small to be worth a moment's thought, while the question of what is right and what is wrong has seemed all-important.

-Albert J. Nock

I'm not trying to be too wild, but you can see the pavement pretty easily in the video. Switzerland is also known for having stunning road infrastructure. I completely agree, I have not looked at the course profile, just looking at the youtube clip.

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Finally have the time to respond adequately. To answer your question, on challenging courses, I have found the typical aerobar set up to be lacking (compared to drops with advanced clip on aerobars) in a bunch of ways, but these are the big two:

Reason 1 - The typical triathlon aerobar set up involves a flat or flat-ish base bar. At typical aerobar stack heights, this means that your basebar grips (and brake levers too) are about at the height of where your brake hoods would be on a road bike. So why is that a problem? Well, if you want to corner fast at 30mph, 40mph, and faster, to be able to do that at speed you must be able to get your body's center of gravity as low as possible. You simply can't do that if your hands are effectively at brake hood height. For example, most triathletes can't get anywhere near this low on the their tri bike set ups:



No, this is not a sustainable, long distance position. But if you can get into something like this for cornering and descending, if you have some skill, you can get gobs and gobs of time on other triathletes who can't get super low on their bikes. I know you can get time this way, because I have done it myself many times.

Reason 2 -To get a good aero advantage from aerobars based off a pursuit-type bar (cowhorns), you really can't have any significant upturn at the end of the horns, and the grips (and TT brake levers) should be flat, essentially parallel to the ground (you can set them up differently of course, but then you're essentially negating any aero advantage of such a set up). So kinda like this:




So, is this a problem? On flat and perfectly smooth courses, not at all. But take a bike with this kind of bar set up and incline it like this, add in 30mph, 40mph, or more and what happens?



Well, your bike is now inclined downward. And those flat grips on your basebar? They're inclined downward too. But that is not a problem, you can just grip the bar for dear life and hang on, right? Yes, you can. But not so much if you now have to brake. If you're screaming down corners like this, then you must be able to hold on to your downwardly inclined grips, all while taking your fingers off the bars so you can grab handfuls of brake lever. And when you do brake, your body's center of gravity is profoundly shoved forward, trying to toss you off the front of the bike. Add in some bad asphalt, cobbles, or potholes and it makes for a very very precarious perch.

But, yes, it can be done. Just not very fast.

So how do drop bars help with this issue? Well, in the situation above, you can jam your hands in the hooks. You can use the inside of the hooks to anchor your body against deceleration forces. You don't need to grip a downwardly inclined tube (a flat basebar) and hope strong hand muscles and friction keeps you on. While on your drops, you also need to release your grip to brake. But you don't need to hold on to the bar for dear life while doing this. You can use your open palms against the hooks to have most of your fingers quite relaxed, ready for action, ready to brake when needed.

At least this is my experience ...

Greg @ dsw

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I've heard some stories! I marvel at these behind the scenes tricks like using the follow car to "steer" for the riders so they don't have to look up.

If you're planning to compete on a technical TT course and aren't comfortable in the base bars' set up, I just suggest you get comfortable before adding a parachute.
Thanks for chiming in.
-SD

I'm probably just not that skilled a descender that it makes a difference for me. Guys like Fabian are just so much better than you or I that it makes no difference to them what bars he's riding either. That video does show him bunny hop a curb and up over a roundabout at ~34mph on a TT bike. Some of the high speed turns he takes may not look technical but in several cases he outran the follow motorcycle.

One point about your position comment. If a drop bar or lower base bar allows you to get Cadel-low, couldn't you just lower the base bar for technical courses?

-SD

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Absolutely. A great point for someone like the OP who only rides a trainer. Hard to know if you would be better on road bars or TT bars with no time outdoors.

If and only if all you lovely manufacturers gave us some low stack frames to work with; I'm already on a -25 110 mm stem . ;-)

(Of course I don't need my base bar any lower than present...)

Honestly, the idea of a dual-position bike seems relatively lost on me(save some edge cases which include flying to stage races)--whichever bike you "need" to be good, spend your money there, then pretty much for the cost of the conversion bits, you can put together an awfully nice used bike of the other type. And as a bonus, it'll probably have the right geometry for the task. (Share as much of the bling between bikes as prudent, e.g. wheels, PM...)

Yes, the more and more electronic shifting becomes prevalent, and the more and more stack and reach seems to be converging between tri and road (see: above complaint), the more likely an all-in-wonder bike becomes. You're really down to geometry and dealing with the rear brake as far as the detractors. It's still a lot of things to swap around.

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The question of who is right and who is wrong has seemed to me always too small to be worth a moment's thought, while the question of what is right and what is wrong has seemed all-important.

-Albert J. Nock

Is the DA not low-stack enough?
-SD

Your calculator is really cool! Props for that. Might want to put in the info that the saddle height is as measured from? I assumed the BB to mid-saddle (fore-aft)


You're right--I can get there on a 54. A squeeze (500/585/790) on the 56. You guys are off the hook. :)

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The question of who is right and who is wrong has seemed to me always too small to be worth a moment's thought, while the question of what is right and what is wrong has seemed all-important.

-Albert J. Nock

I'm not sure exactly where I am on the skill spectrum and I don't claim to ride like Fabian, but I don't think that that is hard for a very good descender to do on a downhill (on a flat or a climb, well, that's another story). I've spent many hours of my life descending (by bike) steep and winding roads in Northern California where I was frequently slowed down by cars. Not by a traffic back-up, individual cars. Often, wanting to go faster, I would pass the cars and drop them. Of course, the cars would catch up near the bottom where the road flattened out. In my experience, cars (and 2 guys on a motorcycle) don't seem to take turns nearly as fast as one can on a bike. But, to clarify, I was only able to do this with gravity assistance (and good tires of course). If Fabian can do this on the flat, it is not so much because of skill, it is more because of his big powerplant.


Yes, absolutely, if you have the space to do this. But if you have a typical flat bar and your tri bike fits you well and you are running zero spacers, you can't do that: there is nowhere to go lower, as your stem is already slammed. The only way to do this would be to get an aerobar that has a big side-to-side downslope (i.e., grips are much lower than the the stem) like this:



Then you can indeed get your center of gravity as low as you need to corner like a demon.

But if you run such a bar, there is still reason 2 (see details in my post above). Descending and cornering and braking at the same time on such a bar (especially on bad pavement) is very precarious. No, not so precarious that it is impossible to do. But precarious enough that one can't do it fast, at least nowhere near the limits of one's bike and skill. But with drop bars (and conventional brake levers), it's a piece of cake.

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