For me, I find the best stability on a TT bike by stretching out on the extensions and placing as much weight as possible over the front wheel. It also helps me to keep the power on. Coasting, for some reasons, seems less stable.

I deal with bumpy patches the same way. It seems to me that having the power on and weight over the front wheel make everything much more stable -- not to mention, faster.

Do you have a stability issue while riding in the wind or is this an execution question?

Personally I have no problems riding in the wind and statistically I do better on a windy course. I'm a lot smaller than you (5'3" 142 lbs) and don't get blown around much at all riding a disc and a jet 6 or 9 front. I actually like the 9 better on a windy day, I think it's faster.

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

How deep is your front wheel? I love my 90mm front, but I'll drop down to 55-65mm on very windy days. I've found that keeping pressure on the pedals helps (also running a 55t front ring).

Funny thing is when you have cross wind, you should go low and get into aero position to lower the center of gravity. If you grab a base bar and stand up, it only makes worse. Tuck in as low as possible and lean whatever it takes to compensate the wind. Hold on tight to your extension and focus. That's what I do and it works great. I just rode 190 miles by the ocean side and had no problem at all. I use Zipp 808 in the front and disc in the rear.

Depends. At some point you the extra leverage over the front wheel afforded by the base bars. E.g. for really gusty winds, and particularly for technical routes. I could see if you're doing a reasonably non-technical oceanside jaunt, it could be done in the aero position without too much difficulty.

When it is really windy I move my arms forward and more to the outside of the pads, which helps stabilize the bars and spread my weight to the sides.
I also look down the road at topography ...peaks/valleys, open fields, trees, buildings etc ... and anticipate where the winds might change, gust or pick up velocity and try to be prepared for what may happen when I get there.
Staying on the gas and riding outside in the conditions is the best way to get better.

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Member of the Litespeed Factory Team
www.litespeed.com

You are right. I live where it’s mostly flat with some rolling hills. I saw several people got knocked down by cross wind at Galveston 70.3 and they seat up and ride with base bar because they are scared.

Thanks all for weighing in. I do believe I just need more time in the wind and “getting over it.” I tried leaning a bit more on the front at times, which seemed to help some, but the front wheel was still really twitchy. Need practice.

I’m fighting stability, but I’m open to the fact that I need to keep pressure on the pedals and thus keep speed up, maybe relax into a bit more pressure on the front end, and trust that the gusts won’t blow me off the road or into a competitor. This last race I thought if I was home I wouldn’t ride in these conditions, so perhaps the biggest issue is changing my perception.

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Ride outside as often as you can, and always ride with your race wheels. I ride my TT bike with my everyday 90mm front & disc rear wheels. The result: when I get hit with a 20 MPH crosswind gust, it does not affect me at all.

I don't like riding in the wind. Those side gust ruin the fun. I did my first windy race in 2017. I had my new disk rear wheel and wondered if I should put my training wheel back on but didn't and was fine. Yes, I powered through it and I found that the faster I was going forward the less I felt the side wind. I assumed that the force you feel from the side wind is a ratio of your speed and the faster you go the smaller that ratio becomes. I did another windy race a year later and again the didn't feel the side gust. a month ago I was in a windy race and I watched everyone else as bike check in and asked a few people with disk wheels if they were worried about the wind. Many of them told me about riding in other races and just powering through, so I felt okay about my wheels, but that race was a killer. The opening of the bike course went along the dike that held the water in the reservoir that the swim was in. In were 15 feet up where nothing protected us from the wind and to make it worse the wind was coming of the water which has less ground friction to slow it down that it would across land. The first mile we had the wind at out back then the road turned from the side of the reservoir to the dam. When we did that we moved into the side wind and the first gust about blew me over. I had to move my arms out of the aero bars to pot them as wide as they could get over the break hoods to stabilize the bike. Then I got as low as possible to reduce the cross section I was showing to the wind. Then I powered through it. I slowed some to keep the bike stable, but was trying to keep the foreword momentum to reduce the side wind speed to bike speed ratio. At the finish line I talked to two different people that saw people blown over on the bike, so I have a new respect for wind. That was the scariest bike ride I have done and my arms were more sore after the ride from stabilizing the bike than my legs were. So, get your arms wide to broaden your base, keep your head down, and keep peddling. That is what I did, I am sure I did it all wrong and others will have different tips. I didn't blow over though and others did so there is always that. :-)

I've also struggled a lot with crosswinds this season when I transitioned from racing on a road bike (with no aerobars and 50mm wheels) to a TT bike with deeper wheels.

At first I thought it was the wheels, and wasted ungodly amounts of money trying different wheelsets: Zipp 454/858, then 808s, then 404/808, then 303/808, then Enve 5.6 with an Enve Disc. No matter what the wheel combo, I still never felt anywhere close to as confident as I did on my road bike with Bora 50s. (Though I like the Enve 5 front + Disc rear combo best for flatter riding and the 303/808 NSW combo if any windy descending was involved).

Eventually I talked to some smart bike fitters on this forum and realized it wasn't the wheels, it was the bike. I was set up all wrong with my position (on too small of a bike, and the Canyon Speedmax geometry just makes no sense with long stays and a short front center and short trail combine for skittish handling).

So now I'm looking at selling all my wheels and getting a disc brake bike in the right size and right geometry.

Anyhow, my point is, I've struggled with this a lot, and have spent a lot of time trying to fix it. Here's what I learned this season.

-- Is your fit good? If not, that could be part of your problem.
-- Are your pads too narrow? I widened my pads considerably and it made a HUGE difference in my comfort handling the bike. Start by making your pads stupid wide and see if that helps. Ride a loop on a windy day and bring them in closer and closer until you feel like the aero-to-stability ratio is good for you.
-- Counter-intuitively, it helps to pedal harder into the wind. You instinct is to sit up on your base bars and coast, but if you force yourself to "man up" and press on, you'll find your actually more stable low and applying power through the pedals. In particular I found dropping down a gear or two and riding at a lower cadence and focusing on pedaling smooth also helped, but giving me something to think about other than my fear of crashing.
-- Everyone wants to look like a badass on the deepest possible wheels, but try riding on something shallower for a while to build your confidence. I went to an outdoor track a few times testing different Zipp wheelset combos and found I was actually fastest on my 303/808 combo (not the 404 or 808) on windy days because I was more aero and more relaxed (which likely would translate into better running after) due to less mental and physical fatigue fighting the bike. At the end of the day, assuming you can actually stay in aero, something like an 808 is only a couple minutes faster than a 303 over an Ironman, like <1 min on a 40K TT. If you're getting out of aero often due to fear, you're likely slower. Maybe switch to an Enve 3.4 or 303/404 combo for a season and graduate back to the 6.7 in a year or so?

20 MPH is hardly packing a big punch. At least where I ride in Texas, that’s pretty much a normal ride. I would expect the vast majority of riders to be able to handle such winds. It’s the windier days with 35-50 MPH gusts that sometime create issues for me even as a bigger rider. I agree with others in terms of trying to combat that wind although I’m hardly 100% confident with such gusts.

Key to riding in the wind is going with the flow. You can't fight it with everything you've got trying to ride a completely straight line (we're talking big wind here). You have to move with it when it gusts. Now if you don't have a lot of room to be able to do that safely then you probably shouldn't ride.

Galveston 2018 was windy, but the practice ride the day before was terrifying. I’d be leaning one way into the wind and then there would be a break in the buildings and you’d get blasted with wind from the OTHER direction pushing you towards the direction you were already leaning. It was sprinkling too so the ground was wet. I was 100% sure I was going to eat it on that little practice ride. Ride my horns all wobbly for like 18 of the 20 min ride.

I should have clarified my definition of "gust"-- it is suddenly going from a little bit of wind to lot of wind. I have ridden when the ground-level reported gusts were 20 MPH to 30 MPH (as in barely a breeze to all of a sudden getting hit by a wall of fast wind), and my observation was that 30 MPH gusts were extreme and caused trouble for most people. It blew a friend of mine into the barriers on the course. This year at Gulf Coast, I was guessing that the gusts were around 20 MPH when I was riding along Front Beach Road between condos (wind blast from around 0 to ~20), but I did not have an anemometer. Those were pretty abrupt and I saw people weaving and panicking.

I can ride all-day in steady 30 MPH crosswinds comfortably. It is the blasts that get me.

You have lots of input but here’s a couple of thoughts.
Watch the riders in front of you when descending down a mountain, if they catch gust from the side, particularly in the valley, you will see them tilt and brace. It will help you to get ready. Don’t hit the brakes and stay in what ever position you are already in.
When gust hits don’t let it grab the handle bars out of your hands and throw your balance off. I always raced with a disk In the rear and 404 in the front. 808 in the front was just too much for me.

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MLB

To ride well in the wind, one must ride in the wind.

40 - 45 MPH gusts of Lake Ontario riding on lake road with a 90 mm front wheel

Lol
Ok post up your videos

I want to see all these TT pros not getting blown around

The best triathlon song the Bee Gees never wrote