It's better for everyone else because you'd be slower.

Looking at Argon I seem to be "off the bottom". The only biek they list pad reach for is the E-119, and I'm off the min of 415mm

I'm not sure it would. I've never done a sprint, I am just suggesting that you might be better off with that sort of frame depending on how you want to ride. Might depend on the course too. I think there's a lot of people out there that want one bike to do everything, vs a road bike AND a TT bike etc.

That's to middle of pad in argon measurements

Ah ok thank you. See I already have road bikes, so specifically looking for a TT bike now.

Based on suggestions in this thread, I've started looking around.
Below is some geometries compared on a plot. The only bikes I "officially fit" are the Cervelo and the MY'21 Speedmax. The other's either don't list a pad reach/stack range or I'm out of range.

The Giant I'm 35mm off!

Maybe I'm looking at the wrong place? https://storage.googleapis.com/...zing-chart-en-v5.pdf

Only the E-119 has pad reach/.stack and the range on the smallest bike (XS) is 415-505, which would mean my 408 is out of range.

Have you looked at the Cube Aerium C68 Low? That might work for you too.

I had a Cervelo S2 51cm and I had a lot of trouble with toe overlap so just be aware that if you are looking at a 48cm Cervelo that might be an issue?

Your sitting angle (hip marker to BB centre) looks to be around 77deg, which is low for a Tri position.
If that is an ISM saddle you're pushing way back on it, so the setback number isn't a good reflection
Sitting back is making your search much harder - you would have more reach to work with if sitting forward and if you opened your min hip angle a bit it would likely help that hop at the top of your pedal stroke.

Best place to look is the Argon website, but I don't want to appear too focussed there, was just an example. The reason the other models don't list pad x/y is that they aren't integrated bars and so you can swap to one that has the adjustment you need. The E119 has an integrated cockpit not designed for swapping and so the X/Y is shown as they can confidently state that.

I've a strange morphology with long legs, short spine leaving an overall 6'4" height, but that means a sky high saddle, short reach and then a pretty significant drop between saddle and pads. Does leave me with a high centre of gravity which is why I err to the side of 'stable' in terms of handling geometries where I can.

As mentioned though your saddle is a long way back. I had a friend get a fit done and he ended up with a very similar 'fit'. What this came down to is that the fit was replicating the familiar position from all his road riding and then building the front around that. Not sure about the fit process, but for him they got led by what he said felt comfortable / right' which of course was a slack seat angle and a saddle nose that would be typically a few degrees higher than for a TT position with TT shorts (Tri kit has less padding in nose which means less pressure when rotated forward - riding my TT bike in Road bibs is really uncomfortable, jsut as road bike in Trishorts isn't fun after 2 hours). To be clear I'm not from a million miles away and with no discussion or qualifications saying your fit is wrong. What I am doing is asking some questions of you that you may wish to consider discussing with your fitter.

That bike is a great bike and a FABULOUS VALUE -but offers ZERO adjustability in the base bar height. It is what it is, no spacers to take it up or down. I had one, it was at the extreme of my fit measurements, (shouldn't have bought it), couldn't ride it. I felt like I may fall over the handlebars it was so aggressive when I was holding the bullhorns. The only time I felt good was in the aero position, and if all I raced were flat / non-technical bike courses I would have kept it for those. But for hilly courses, I couldn't stand up (because of the whole feeling of falling over the bars).

If you can handle an extremely aggressive position and don't mind feeling like you are constantly in the drops with no break from the aero position, it's a perfect bike. I'm in my mid 40's and wasn't keen on something I couldn't adjust if I had some back pain/ limited mobility in the future.

That was my observation when I asked about effective STA.

I think OP stated the tip of the saddle is set back 4.2cm from BB, which isn't much past the UCI limit. And then he did look to my eye like he was sitting back. Which I thought in the fit might be part of the puzzle about why the reach seems low.

I'm not a fitter but have been set up by somebody working to the FIST methodology and it seemed important to establish effective STA pretty early on, as everything else would then follow. I'm not sure how right that is. But it always strikes me as interesting how much we talk about pad x and y on here without really talking much about saddle position. My own x/y falls into the long and low category (Dan called me an "alien" in one of his articles) but I always felt like the seemingly long reach in my fit was at least partially a product of riding a fairly steep STA with very little set back.

Cheers,
Rich.

Get a frame that does *not* have a proprietary stem and cockpit. There are lots of them. Then get a short stem. You can also get bars where the pads mount to the extensions, giving you even more fore-aft adjustment without the need to swap stems.

This was my thought from the start, but I’m struggling to translate from pad X/Y to frame X/Y.
Hence trying to find advice on here/manufacturers sizing.

I'm also on a 48cm (XS) Felt IA16. My pad XY is 405/515 to back of pads. I had to change the aerobar to the Profile Design Subsonic to get the stack that low but I'm using the original stock stem. (100mm 6°)

Stock aero bar is about 25mm higher than mine. Can you put 70mm of spacers under the pads to get it up over 600mm?

To be honest I’m not sure but I think so, I think you can use the bridge to pedestal that high. I have a Felt bayonet 3 from a few years ago and it had a bridge although I don’t need it.

This is the calculation for Profile Design Sonic/Ergo bars
I work to rear of the pad, so have converted your pad X
I've estimated your bar tilt at 10deg, ideally that would be listed in your fit report
Those two bikes have X of 398 and 390, it's not that hard to get 20-30mm behind frame X with normal parts
If you go for the PD Neosonic bracket that gets another 25mm further back than the Sonic

The tilt is important as it moves the pad back and down on a clipon and convex pedestal arrangement. Or just down on a concave pedestal system.

Yes, getting the effective STA sorted early in the fit is key
But also - with a fit bike I like to measure the pad position about 3/4 of the way through the fit to make sure we're heading towards a real bike. If heading out of bounds at that point the rest of the fit can work on being comfortable in a realistic range. It's rarely a problem though as if I can see that the rider is hampered by lower back and hip mobility I'll already have pushed them forward to open the hips.

In this example of an escaped Englishman (we get the good ones, not like Australia getting the convicts)


Was sitting forward on a bad saddle, changed saddle to a Jcob that supported him and gave us some room to go forward (86deg sitting angle is about as far forward as I go) to open hips.
Shorter cranks to open hips too. Then able to lower the torso fractionally but that wasn't a big priority for someone who just wants to be able to use the aerobars.
You can see the impact of opening hips and supportive saddle in the big reduction in knee lateral travel.

That's really interesting, thanks! Can you send me that calculator?
My fit is actually 9 degrees, so 10 was a good guess.

I think it would be easier to get on a 48 Cervelo? (For example the P5 with the integrated cockpit puts me in a 48 in their charts).