I am fine with the poll as a general statement style question. However, I don’t agree with Tri and Road being the same.

Bottom line, tri bike peak aero. Road, adjustability first then throw aero in after that.

The problem is that whats peak aero for you can and does change, with fitness, goals and training.

If I'm doing Olys, I want my aero basebar as low as it can go, and my back tilted so flat it's hard to see forward.

Give me a Half iron or Ironman, and I'd want 4 spacers in there to ease up the accumulated fatigue on my back.

I've done both of these positions with my bike, and it's not too bad, but is sort of a pain to get the spacers and aerobars back in place, so I do think there's value in adjustability.

I also suspect the 'easily adjustable' bikes tend to be easier to get apart and into bike boxes for shipping, esp since Tribiketransport is dead.

Agree about road vs. tri, but the same false dilemma fallacy exists. In my case, adjustability is even less important for road, since I am more tolerant of position and aero is less important me me in road bike fit. So for me, adjustability on a road bike, assuming I am getting a size that fits, is less significant than with a tri bike.Fair point here. I have only adjusted my tri bike once in 7 years of ownership. That was after I got a new cockpit and angled the bars up and lowered the base bar. Although it would probably make sense to lower the cockpit for Olys and Sprints (in which I race highly competitively), I have never done that. There should probably be an asterisk or sub question where "adjustability" is defined as easy to change position over time for fit changes or race conditions versus simply getting the bike to match your current fit. The poll doesn't say "easily adjustible," which is a different criteria.

 
Adjustability is the key to achieving peak aero. You cannot achieve peak aero without lots of adjustability.

Kind of a blanket statement. Bikes that do not have lots of adjustability may fit a lot of folks perfectly given the right size is chosen.

I believe you're wrong here. Going lower doesn't = faster. I and many others are finding out that saddle to elbow pad drop is shrinking at no cost to CdA. Go back 10 years and sure the above statements might have been true. Now though it's not.

You're seeing this from the World tour all the way down to 6.5h IM riders who are testing.

In my case I increased pad X by 15mm with no change in CdA. This is not an unusual finding among people who are doing a lot of testing.

I'd further argue that there should be almost if not any difference in your IM and Oly positions. Your bike position should be comfy be it 30min or 6h.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

The poll is asking about picking aero at the expense of adjustability.

Also, what does a "fit perfectly" mean ? I have seen many people that had a bike that "fit" but couldn't get in the most aero position with it.

I'll give you a real world example. A world tour team did a "fitting session" last year for their riders. Aero was not a consideration in that process. Aero eyeball was, really aero wasn't. Lower is better, right ? </pink> This resulted in the forks being cut to their newly fitted positions. At this point they lost their full range of adjustability.

This year, they aero tested before cutting the forks. 66% of riders added stack and felt more powerful with 0 aero penalty.

So if you don't have a lot of adjustability you probably won't achieve peak aero.

Jump back up a post. My original point was that making adjustabilty and peak aero an either-or is a false dilemma fallacy. A rider can achieve peak aero on a bike that is the appropriate size. Modern bikes typically have a broad range of adjustability that overlap fit with one or two sizes.

The question presumes that a rider cannot achieve a correct fit without some extra special adjustability. That is false.

I should have made it clearer I was agreeing with you.

The idea that you need only limited adjustability after doing a traditional fit (without aero testing) is just wrong if you want to achieve peak aero. If you only want comfort and/or power production, sure. That is what traditional fits accomplish.

by "aero" we're talking about the bike. not about you on the bike. for example, if you make the stem/handlebars all in one piece on a road bike and you achieve an aero benefit, at the price of adjustability, which feature or imperative do you value?

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

This year I saw the "scrapping" of 3 custom cockpits (around 3k euro a pop) when the riders found they were in a less optimized/non adjustable position. These cockpits were ordered after a fitting with one of the most reputed fitters in the world, in a fit studio.

If a person buys an "aero bike" after a traditional fit, that doesn't allow him to further optimize his aero position, may end up sending his bike to that same carbon junkpile when he figures it all out.

Now, if an athlete spent the time to get in an optimal aero position, then decides to lock that position in a non adjustable setup, fine.

That would seem to be rationale process. If I got full custom, I don't plan to order a randomly configured custom cockpit and then start A/B testing.

personally - just my opinion based on my own observations and experience - there is no such thing as a position that is not subject to change. "road" is the stickiest position, but taking the aero position as an example, i think further up in the thread you mentioned a bunch of changes to aero positions for which you were the change agent. ergo, that position is subject to change. it is the bike fitter with a particular hubris that thinks his or her fit expertise results in a customer's position that will never be changed. so, there really is no such thing, in my view, as a forever custom cockpit.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

100% agree.

Here is a real world example. This year a team is on helmet X. What we found is there was a positioning attribute that seemed to work with many of the riders, that was very specific to this helmet. And this was different with a competitive helmet. If the team orders 30 custom cockpits and changes helmet sponsor next year, we can add to the carbon junkpile.