"Dance with who brung ya."

IOW -- you will ride best in the bike position at which you did your training. There is no exogenous advantage to steep or shallow. Your advantage is to choose one and ride like that in training.

I would personally choose an efficient (ie, reasonably aerodynamic) position. Train on it, and you will climb every bit as well as if you trained on a "shallow" position. Then, for the other 3/4 of the bike ride, you will not be wasting energy overcoming more wind than you should.

Only change your position if you're going to train on it as well. If you are going to train on it, I think your bike will probably handle a little better, rather than worse, with your weight moved back a bit (assuming you don't overdo it). If I remember right, the Saber has a shortish top tube, which would make moving rearward a bit just fine.

Brent, IMC has alot more flats and downhills vs hills. I didn't have any problem using a tri bike.

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18x Ironman, 3x Hawaii
US Army (Ret.), Vietnam Vet ('71-'72)

Rod,

I've had no problem with the climbs riding the in the past riding the Saber. I found sitting on the nose of the saddle and spinning high cadence up the climbs worked well for me. The Saber handles nicely for the decent off Richters and Yellow Lake so I'm able to stay in the aerobars.

I was just wondering if a different setup would make much difference for climbing. I'm thinking of changing the setup for some training and see how it feels. Worst case, I just move the setup back to what it is now.

I did IM MOO last year on my tri bike. There is a loop you go on twice.Total 80 miles with a lot of rollers and climbs albeit short. Tri bike was fine. The aero position was great on the flats in the wind for sure. Trained on it all year and found climbing was fine.

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Trying to find ways to pass the time.

You should ride IMC steep. As another poster stated, there are lots of flats and downhills...and you have to run a marathon afterwards. No point riding slack , and frying your hamstrings and hip flexors and shuffle through the marathon. This is likely the biggest reason to stay reasonably steep for any Ironman, even with some climbing. As long as it is not super technical like riding in the Alpes or Dolomites and you need a road bike to safely get down switchbacks, I can't see an advantage in going too slack.

What goes up must come down. The steep geometry is optimized by speed. Downhills are fast, ergo...

You get something back on the downhill that should make your steep setup preferrable at the end of the day (gawd I hate that expression).

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Cousin Elwood - Team Over-the-hill Racing
Brought to you by the good folks at Metamucil and Geritol...

Thanks to everyone for the views on why to stay steep / change the setup.

It looks like there are as many advantages as disadvantages. Since the bike is comfortable in the aero position the way it is it looks like there's little reason to fix what isn't broken.

That right there is the gold standard for your decision. You'll do fine if you just train the way you are going to race.