Ritchey makes a C260 stem with a 25 degree rise. You can use it upside down and really get some good lowering of the basebar out of the deal, assuming you've already removed all the steerer tube spacers below the stem. Other than than, you can play tricks with your arm rests to get them lower, but that depends on your comfort level with fabricating your own parts.

I'd be careful getting a frame that's too small and running a longer stem. I've done that before, and it can be very difficult to manage the handling with that much weight being over the front wheel. You might have a different experience though.

This is best post I've ever seen on Slowtwitch in a long time! It's way up there with stuff that Josh Poertner posts and Slowman's posts on bike fitting. Mark this one down, folks, and read Nick B's post very carefully.

Frame stack is getting taller, which means that there's very little left to fit fast, low riders. Worse still, frame stack eats away at other ways to attain the same rider stack. I'd rather use aero armpad spacers, for example, than let an ugly non-aero head tube take up the stack. Tall head tubes are getting in the way of aerodynamics.

Well said, Nick B!

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AndyF
bike geek

I'll give you this...when a guy like me with major neck injuries rides with zero spacers on the new P3 (size 51, I am 5'6"), then the stack height is indeed high. This is the highest stack 51/small bike I have ever used. I probably would have been fine on the 48 with 1 cm of spacers and a slightly longer stem. If I was 25 again, I'd need a negative rise stem

Having said that from the perspective of making money, there are more of "today's me" than you guys or yesterday's version of me (I used to ride with a look ergo stem with stem slammed down so that my base bar was barely 2 inches above the tire....but that was 20 years ago). The market for TT bikes for guys in your range is very small. Take the bottom 97% of the 40-59 year old age group and those are the people buying tri bikes in volume. Build bikes optimized around them and they will make you good revenue...the rest of you guys will need to suck it up and get negative rise stems etc. The market has spoken and we're the buyers, not you, so yes, I agree, in general the long and low bike should go the way of the dodo bird, not because it has no technical place, it just does not have decent business case. It's the same reason why WTC caters to the same group of age groupers over pros. That's who the market is...fast guys don't matter as much from the business perspective, at least you don't lose that many volume sales missing out on a few fast guys.

Dev, there is only one you. you are one of a kind ;)

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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.”

We all know why, Paul. It doesn't make it easier to take.

Someone needs to make extremely tall, safe aero-profiles armpad spacers. I'd rather have those than a big honking head-tube.

I also want to add this: Most new bikes leave the shop with fits that are performed by people who are not qualified to do fits. This leads to a lot of dissatisfaction and grumbling. There's also the perception that you need to be super-flexible to use a bike with a short frame stack. That's not at all the case. You really just need to find a very good bike fitter.

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AndyF
bike geek

Amazing how they optimized the P3 around me and they are selling so many to normal people :-). What a fool that Damon Rinard guy is. He did not even know he was optimizing it around my limitations when he was designing it !!! Now if he can just remove the seat tube and seat stays and deliver the beam version, I will be set for life.

I really have to pull you guys up a picture of my set up from ITU World's 1994. I could literally put my nose on the front tire if I wanted to. Helps to be 29 vs 49 though!

Dev

Means a lot coming from one of the legends!

your helmet is too big.

if that's a 4000s 23mm that's not a good choice for a TT. Kona, maybe.

whatever it is that you're wearing is probably not the fastest choice.

well done on the P4, best bike ever made, if paired with 3T Ventus and all blacked out components and wheels. You might want to search for a -17 version out there somewhere

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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.”

This made me spray my drink. Legends?! :-)

I am only stating what I saw while working with the very best bike fitters. Things that prevent them from finding the best fit for fast riders.

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AndyF
bike geek

I have this mental list of the slowtwitch forumite greats. You on my list bro.

Tell me more about the helmet, do you mean the tail or the front? I am open to suggestions on a better one. That one hugs my back pretty well nearly all the time, which I figured was the most important thing.

Yep, that is a 4000s 23. 40k TT is something I do once a year more for FTP data point and CdA verification than anything else, I am not interested in buy special gear just for that 1 hour (ie no booties either).

On the clothing, this is 2013 and that is a De Soto Riviera Top and a Forza Pair of shorts. In 2014 I wore the PI Octane for most of the year (40k TT included). I was one of the people that never experienced documented gains on the bike and I definitely felt like it inhibited me temperature wise on the run so I sold it. Still looking for gains on that front for next year. This outfit is good, but I am sure a super tight aero jersey that I strip off for the run would be better. Like all of us, I am trying to find the best clothing combination to limit overall time from start to finish and that varies so much depending on if it is wetsuit legal or not, if it is warm or not, etc. I agree that for a 40k TT, there is a better clothing option than what is shown in the picture, I just don't own it and am probably not going to buy it unless it helps get me to the long course finish line faster.

That is a negative stem, I just don't remember off hand how negative it is. I had a -35 adjustable for a while and was totally comfortable that low, but I never saw any CdA improvement in my testing and I HATED the fact that no mater how tight it was, there was always a little flex in the stem, routing cables also got to be a pain when the extensions are that low.

This was it with the adjustable stem (and new paint following a hard crash and some carbon repair).


Bike is still in the hands of TBT on the way back from last race. While it has been gone, I have had some serious bike envy . . .if I had a good fit on an IA, P5-6or an SC, I probably would have dropped the coin already.

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Ironman Certified Coach

Currently accepting limited number of new athletes

I totally agree with what you are saying being one of the guys who could never get "low enough bikes" and riding with my ergo stem like Boardman. But, the market for those types of riders is really small. In the end, the economics does not favour servicing this category of rider. And while I know what you are saying about flexibility, this only applies for fully able bodied riders. If you had a neck of back injury, there are limitations, and the market from older riders carrying old injuries that limit what they do, it likely larger than the super fast (and generally younger) market segment.

Dev, most ppl dont have injuries keeping them from obtaining a faster position.

The problem lies with inappropriate fitters and use of words like "comfort" and "aggressive"

Now, a lot of things could be said about what I am about to say... BUT

I probably see a lot more of the "average consumer" than you do, and this trend is probably a good thing for a lot of them.

I'm not saying it's a good thing for everybody...but from both a marketing and a consumer engagement standpoint I think it is a good thing.

So far in this thread, on Slowtwitch (which is the niche of the niche insofar as the tri world is concerned) we have seen 2 dissenters (maybe 3, can't really tell what DevPaul is at this point) with the current geometry trend. I'm not sure if you count as a dissenter or not...but it sounds like yes you are so that's 4 dissenters. 4. So far.

My two cents.

That is a sweet paint job. When you did the carbon repair and paint, did you consider adding some top tube storage bosses? It's not a hard job for a carbon frame expert.

Greg @ dsw

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Advanced Aero TopTube Storage for Road, Gravel, & Tri...ZeroSlip & Direct-mount, made in the USA.
DarkSpeedWorks.com.....Reviews.....Insta.....Facebook
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Come back when you are 55 or even 45. Most of those athletes have a variety of limitations. You don't have any clue what you are talking about "yet". There is a reason the long and low bikes are becoming less available...you only see yourself and your immediate peers. Product managers across the industry see the needs of the entire user base and what will maximize revenue. They just have a bigger sample size in terms of assessing ROI than you or I might.

Have you ever taken a new product to market that requires a big R&D investment, product take to market cost and must have a reasonable product life span/longevity in the market? View it from that angle, and you'll understand why your particular needs (which by the way, were mine 20 years ago) are not being serviced. Back in the day we had to do like Boardman slamming the bars down with an ergo stem. Then long and low bikes came around and we could ride them with normal stems. Then the product managers found that all these athletes were riding bikes for guys like you now (or me then) with a zillion spacers...and that was the majority of the sales so they said, "heck, we can just make bikes for guys like that, and the fast guys can just deal with negative rise stems", because we make more sales if the bikes are more easily fit and comfortable out of the gate.





I know Steve Harad took heat for going from a long and low Airfoil pro to the higher stack Kestrel 4000 and shorter reach....he explained that he was making a bike that was easier for the bulk of his customers to ride, while still being useable by guys who wanted to really go lower with a lower stem.

By the way, I agree with you that there are some fitters not doing the right thing, but since the fitter is not employed by the bike brand, why risk losing sales to bad fitters when yuo can make a bike that can still work with a bad fit. This is good business...taking what is in your control into your control to close the monetary transaction.

i can maybe add a couple more, as I know 2 folks that are 5-9 with 48cm NP3s now. with 1cm spacers, the 51 would be too tall at +22mm

That's what you get when you turn bike fit into a marketing tool instead of the art form it should be. Shops simply don't know how to fit bikes properly, and so manufacturers now build bikes that they can sell instead of what they know is right. Great for me, as all those people need to be re-fit! Finding a bike to fit them...that's another story. When a Trek Speed Concept is considered a long/low bike, you know we've gone in the wrong direction. Felt DA long & low? Really?

It also never ceases to amazing me how people have been conditioned to accept less than optimal positions, or buy into the flexibility or aggressive is less comfortable myths. Flexibility has nothing to do with it, it doesn't take significant adaptation time (if any), lower is almost always more comfortable - you just have to do it right, and you need to do it with a fit bike. And, by the way, if you just put someone in aero and start moving that fit bike around under them without allowing them to re-set themselves, you're doing it wrong. About 72% off all people will not rotate their hips properly if that's how you conduct fits. But, hey, keep doing it! More business for me!

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Jim Manton / ERO Sports

I rarely find that to be true. We have 70 yr old clients who would put most people's positions on this forum to shame.

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Jim Manton / ERO Sports

sounds like you have your priorities in line with the tires and clothing. just know there are better options, and there are those on this forum that can help you make the decision should it ever come to that.

as for your helmet I was talking about *smaller* like in a size smaller. There are two components to aero drag, simplified, and that is Coefficient of drag and area. I suspect most awesome TT helmets that test well for everyone do so because they're smaller. So, if the Bell (or the similar Giro) test well for you, get the smallest possible size you can get. Same goes for the P09, which seems to test well on every head.

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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.”

I would agree with that, generally. But there are far more ROAD "shops" than TRI "shops." I think that is an important consideration when considering whether one has the right skillset to fit "properly." (which, in our world, revolves around triathlon).

Just to provide an example. I personally conduct 10-15 tri-specific fits each week. My other fitters a handful more. Below is a pic of a recent fit which is probably the most common type of athlete we see. I think we can all agree this is not the fittest of athletes, but certainly training hard and wanting to improve. Honestly, she actually came in with a better than average bike shop fit, but not a position she could maintain comfortably for very long (15 minutes at a time). As you can see from the bottom pic, the answer to her comfort was not going higher, it was going longer and lower. The very next day she went out and rode 90 miles and emailed later that afternoon to say it was the most comfortable 90 miles she'd ever experienced on a bike. She rode virtually the entire ride in aero and felt great. YOU JUST HAVE TO DO IT RIGHT! Oh, and by the way, there really aren't a lot of bikes that could fit her in this position - especially off-the-shelf.[/img]

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Jim Manton / ERO Sports

Calfee did the repair, they were awesome, local guy did the paint, but he does plenty of bike for pros and others around the country (Alan Edwards). I am going to get him to touch it up when it gets back. I beat it up a little bit recently.

I never thought about having them put the bosses on, because I am a moron! That would have been perfect, and exactly where the damn crack in the frame was repaired too! Damn it, why didn't I think of that.

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Ironman Certified Coach

Currently accepting limited number of new athletes

What was her limiter in the first position? ("limited to 15mins at a time")

The fitter.

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Jim Manton / ERO Sports