I would suggest a time trial bike.

Get the best triathlon bike you can afford. I noticed a speed increase on my HIM and IM bike times. In my humble opinion, the only way to buy speed is better wheels...oh and to put the chicken wings and beer down. Also I really good bike fit will go a long long way. I ride Dura Ace but in all honesty Ultegra is right there as far as quality but with some weight gain. I always liked Dura Ace and Ultegra because those components last forever. I mean forever. I have a custom built Seven Odonada road bike that i purchased in May 2001. Still riding the original Dura Ace components with 10s of thousands of miles. Ride was ridden everywhere in the world. Quality shit.

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Roar Lion Roar

At that price point, the wheels probably are not demonstrably different. I bought my tri bike with 105 gear. My first major upgrade was a speedy wheelset.

If you are doing full distance and multiple other triathlons... is your focus enough tri oriented that a dedicated tri bike would make more sense? Regardless, you might be able to maximize bike and budget most if you got the SL5 and then put some deep carbon wheels on it for racing. Ride the stock wheels until they die, or ride the carbon wheels full time-- that's what I do.

Centuries on a tri bike pretty much suck-- I've BTDT. However, if you have an old road bike for the true road rides, then you might LOVE a true tri bike in all those Olys and 70.3s, along with the big daddy IM.

I want to stay away from time trial bikes because I enjoy riding outside of triathlons, to include a lot of hill riding, and I simply don't want three bikes living in small condo. I understand I'm sacrificing some speed by going road plus clip on aerobars but I'm okay with that trade-off considering the other rides. Totally agree with saying no to beer and chicken wings...well except for maybe when the Packers are playing, ha.

I ride my time trial bike everywhere, including mountains.

Me too.

Although I am going to purchase a cheap road bike for commuting/winter/rain etc. this year. Riding inside on the trainer is the boringest thing in the world.

If I was to make a list for a bike purchase with speed in mind, it would go something like this:
1. Tri bike for position first and aerodynamics second. You don't want to do this, I get that, but the position of your body has a much more significant impact on speed that anything else and road bikes usually don't let you get your body out of the wind very well, other than when you crouch in the drops. If you are good with that then the next best thing is to get an aero road bike. As long as you know what you are giving up, that is your decision. If I was going to use one bike for road and tri I would have two front ends that I could swap easily. One with a stem that dropped be a bit in front and aerobars and one with regular road bars and STI or Di2. Di2 would actually be a lot easier to swap out than steel cables.
2. Wheels and tires. But, remember that wheels only make you significantly faster through aerodynamics. If you don't pick up a 40-80mm deep rim then your wheels performance from one set to another is not going to matter. Tires are as significant as wheels for performance, so make sure you have a good set.
3. Everything else. As long as you keep your gear well maintained, there is no significant performance gain from one group of components to another. If you put Tiagra on Tom Doumoulin's bike, he is still going to win time trials. Cranksets are the worst offender in the wasted money area; they cost the most and matter the least. I am afraid to tri electronic shifting because I might like it too much, but for time trial purposes, my old bar ends with cables is not costing me time. One post-er mentioned that Ultegra and DA last longer, and that is the big benefit outside of bling, if you care about that.

I looked up the wheelset you mentioned as an 'upgrade' and it is a basic aluminum rim, so it is not going to change your performance. You would be better off buying a set of old Zipp 404s used; those will actually make you faster.

Neither of those bikes is going to make you faster or slower. New, I doubt you or most anyone could tell the difference between 105 and Ultegra in a blind test. If my budget was limited, I would buy the cheaper bike and break out the 404s I mentioned on days I want to go fast.

If I had 3000 to spend, I would buy something like a Cervelo P2 and create a dual-purpose bike. Use the regular set-up for multi-sport and swap that out for road bars and a riser stem for an aggressive road position and aero road bike.

105 and ultegra are both great groupsets, if I were looking for a road bike between these 2 I’d probably lean toward the SL6 at 2.5 lbs lighter.

But given your goals... I’d seriously look at keeping my old road bike and buying a TT bike. That’s what I did a year ago, and I’ve only been on my road bike like 3 times since then. The TT bike is much more versatile than I thought it would be.

Gonna have to go with everyone else and say get a tri bike. I went from a road bike with aero bars on it averaging ~18.5mph on my olympics, to about three weeks later doing an equally as flat 70.3 and averaging 20mph. The tri bike has been a gamechanger, and they really are more versatile than people give them credit for. I ride mine about 95% of the time and my road bike maybe 5% of the time.

We just played this game with my husband's new Checkpoint, and ultimately decided to go with the SL5 and a second set of wheels (in his case, set up specifically for road).

Ultegra is nice, but new 105 is a very solid groupset and still a major upgrade from the 105 of 10 years ago. I just bought my tri bike with 105; couldn't justify the cost of the upgrade groupset, and would rather have the race wheels. Ended up with some HED Jet 6's and I couldn't be happier.

I hear you on the roadie. I love mine , and would not want to not have one in favour of only having a tri bike. If I could only keep one, the Silque would be it. I'm lucky enough to have a basement to fill with bikes, though.

This is a good discussion...a lot to think about, thank you!

Here is my issue with a tri bike and feel free to counter with experience or opinion: I mostly do long rides with a group of people who do not have a tri bike and I can't get over the sense that a tri bike is anti-social. Not saying I'm a chatterbox on the rides...it's just a vibe, personal opinion. I think I'm also geared to not like them as two friends got severe back injuries in a season years past. I understand those were probably a result of a bad bike fit but still...proximity bias?

Perhaps more importantly, while I realize my speed would improve on a tri bike, I'm not sure if that amount is worth it--of course this is very subjective! and up for debate. I can be AG competitive at occasional local races but not at M-dot events. I'd could move from MOP to the front middle of the pack perhaps but that's it. So the highly subjective reasons of why I don't like a tri bike outweigh the benefits to me.

So ... break break... looking at the Emonda SL5 vs SL6 and wheel options--a few of you brought up good points about buying better wheels than either Bontrager Paradigm or Mavic Ksyrium. Are there better wheelsets out there for $1,000 or less? Maybe the next level up of Bontrager or Mavic that are carbon? Excluding used for the sake of research and spending hours finding a deal.

I enjoyed the book, "Demystifying the Science of Triathlon Speed" and within the bike section, the author notes aerodynamics are more important than weight. Is this something where a choice of tire could be significant? I usually ride continental grand prix 4000s but maybe I should change those out. I believe the deep rim or disc wheels offer the best aero but those are out of my budget and since I'm lightweight, I'm not sure they'd be a good choice.

He also mentions the best upgrade someone can get is a power meter, and in that vain, I'm inclined to pick the SL5, buy nice wheels, and then apply the savings toward a better IM training plan. Will mull this over until I go for a test ride on both bikes (with regular and upgraded wheels) this weekend!

Between the choice of buying the SL5 and Mavic rims or the SL6 'as-is,' I would go with the lighter bike and the Ultegra groupo.

Thank you for the info—the idea of using two different handlebar setups is intriguing. Something I’ll take into consideration.

Better components lasting much longer is also incentive to buy the SL6 with Ultegra. I think if I upgrade to Dura ace, the price would be an additional grand.

Giant TCR Advanced Pro?

I've pondered a dual set up before but now I have a lot of space, so I just have five different bikes. :)

I do swap out a lot of parts back and forth as I experiment with my new multi-surface/gravel bikes and the most annoying issue is always frayed cables. On thing you may want to experiment with in a dual bar set-up is trying to solder the ends of the cables so that when you swap them out, they don't fray and you can feed them through the holes on multiple occasions. Super glue is somewhat effective at this, but wears off. If you don't have fraying issues, I could probably get to where I could swap bars in 30 minutes or less.

To really drop the front end on the road bike, you need an abnormally long, extreme drop stem as well. If you take a stem designed as a riser and flip it, you can start to get a decently low front end to get your chest and head out of the wind. If you don't get that front end down, then you are better off just bolting on bars to your drop bars. That is still better than nothing because it will be more comfortable because you will have bone support; it just won't be that fast.

Google HED Jet+. Looks like MyBikeShop has the Jet 4+ front with Jet 6+ rear for $899. If you keep an eye on it, they'll sell a full jet 6+ set around that price. Read up if the 25mm wide rim works with the bike though.

I've had 105, Ultegra, and Dura Ace. Only time it was even noticed is if I was trying to be a weight weenie. So only take it into consideration if you are getting to that level.

The Emonda SL6 is a fantastic bike. The Paradigm wheels are decent, on par with the Mavic. If you can stretch, I would go for the SL6 Pro which comes with the Aeleous Pro3 Carbon wheels. During purchase, I would ask the shop if they would swap out the Pro 3 wheels with the deeper Pro 5 wheels.

Get the Ultegra. The Mavics are still shallow rim wheels and will not make you noticeably faster.

You could delay the wheel upgrade until you have saved a little money.

if you're dead set on a road bike (and I think everyone needs a road bike they're in love with more so than a tri bike), then I would go for the 105 and upgrade to a real wheelset. The Shimano groupsets just keep getting better over time because of the trickle down that they do over the years. Hell, the 10 speed Tiagra groupset on my Checkpoint is smoother than the 10 speed Ultegra on my road bike from only a few years ago. The paradigm wheels are just another generic box rim. You're better off buying the cheaper bike with a nice set of Jets or Flos and maybe even a p2m ngEco power meter.

3000$ bike will not make you faster from Madone 4.7, especially Emonda. I'm afraid even 10000-15000$ bike will not make you faster. If you are looking for speed this is wrong approach. If you are looking for N+1 go for it.

you could buy a tri bike and have two cassettes, a 11/28 and an 11/32 if you install a long derailer it would work for both pretty easy swap out for hill climb days.

FLO wheels are within your budget and a pretty solid set of wheels

Understood. Not really looking to get faster solely on bike purchases as much as I want to get a slight upgrade from my current Madone 4.7.

I will look into these! Thanks