Ai_1 wrote:
I would caution against spending too much time or money on fitting extensions to a road bike until you know what sort of position you'll be able to achieve. If you just put extensions on the Canyon Ultimate, you should get a bit of a benefit from bringing your arms and shoulders in but without further changes to the bike, your position will still be essentially a road position, and you may not be particularly comfortable on the extensions either. Depending on how you set up the extensions you may or may not be noticably faster, or more comfortable than riding with your hands on the top of the hoods with your forearm horizontal.
When I started tri, I converted my road bike for tri use for a season before deciding to buy a dedicated tri bike. I initially put extensions on the bars with everything else as as it was, knowing this was unlikely to be ideal but I wanted to try it for the hell of it. I didn't find it comfortable and I was still too upright. Then I replaced swapped my stem for a longer one with significantly more drop and replaced the seatpost with a forward offset post. This got me into something approximating a conventional triathlon position. Then I changed the saddle as my road saddle, which I found pretty comfortable in a road position, was excruciating in a triathlon position with more rotated pelvis. After that I was reasonably comfortable on the bike, and the setup made me moderately quick, but handling was not great. There was too much weight on the front of the bike making it feel rather unstable. It was rideable and I didn't worry about it too much once I got used to it, but when I moved on to a dedicated tri bike I realised how compromised the handling had been.
My current road bike is an Canyon Ultimate. Great bike. However, as much as my old road bike was a compromise with clip-ons, I think the Canyon would be a much worse candidate. The geometry is less relaxed and stable than my previous bike with shorter chainstays and steeper steerer angle, meaning the handling issues will likely be worse. Also the non-standard steerer makes it pretty impossible to source relatively inexpensive stems for what may just be an experiment.
My advice: If your existing drop handlebars can accomodate clip-ons, stick with them for now and get an inexpensive set of clip-ons to try this out and fiddle with the position if necessary. You can worry about replacing the handlebar and buying less adjustible extensions when you know what will work for you. If you are planning to spend a few hundred $/€/£ on components to modify your Ultimate, it might be much better spent on an inexpensive second hand tri bike. Even a rather low end tri-bike will almost certainly be more comfortable, handle better and likely faster than a modified road bike like the Ultimate. And if you make saddle and bar position changes on the Ultimate it's no longer going to be usable as a road bike until you convert it back - that's a big compromise IMO!!!
I have a second seat post with ism saddle.
So I can easily change from road to TT setup.
I am not going to buy a tt bike.
Just looking to buy the best accesoires for it: aero bottles, aero bento box, aero spares box, deep section wheels.
Adding a aero drop bar would be nice.