rruff wrote:
Beats the hell out of me... but I bet you'll find more people at long duration- lower power efforts liking shorter cranks and lower cadence. The little guys pushing 400W in pro TTs are spinning pretty fast and almost lifting off the saddle already, so unless they have impingement issues, shorter cranks aren't going to make a lot of sense. Also IMO, short cranks do not feel "right" climbing hills, and it probably would be a bad idea to change too much between road and TT.
I'd expect it to also depend on femur length, foot length (?), whether a person's muscles work better at greater motion- less force- lower cadence, or lesser motion- more force- higher cadence.
Lots of wee little factors that can contribute.
comparing pro TTs to triathletes is like comparing American football to European football... they're both football but they're two totally different sports. Lots of wee factors contribute but one of the wee factors is decisive... aerodynamic drag.
They only thing that's comparable is the concept of "optimal" for the demands of your sport, your physiology, your morphology. The reason is because a) UCI TT bikes are limited by UCI rules and b) UCI TTs are supramaximal whereas most triathletes on here are doing submaximal efforts while intending to run fast off the bike. Both can have "optimal" positions.
Bottom line it's about comfort for triathletes. Comfort begets aerodynamics and power in triathlon with a proper bike fit. What everyone calls "high hands" is really my "open shoulder angle" concept which is more aerodynamic, more powerful, and more comfortable.
UCI riders work for their bike, because their bikes are fixed. Tri bikes work for their triathletes (or should) because they are changeable in many degrees of freedom. This is what LBSs and lower case bike fitters don't understand, and why capital "B" bike fitters have a job. Bad bike fitters make athletes work for them, good bike fitters work for their athletes.
E
Eric Reid
AeroFit |
Instagram Portfolio Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting
“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”