csb146 wrote:
Maybe not the most popular answer, but you the rider will/can make pretty much any bike handle fine. When I came to triathlon from racing motocross, mountain bikes and crit racing I was and still am pretty astonished at how bad, in a very general sense, triathlete's bike handling skills are. Bike geometry and things like that do make a small difference imo, but a good rider will ride any bike fine.
I appreciate your contribution and I'm sure what you say it's true.
I live in a flat area so unfortunately it's quite difficult to practice proper descents. As AG triathletes we already have three sports to practice on top of whatever else we do in life so it does get quite difficult to improve handling specifically. I recognise descending is a limiter of mine (although I'm sure I'm not in the bottom percentiles of long distance triathletes) and something I'd like to work on and that I've tried to work on.
What I do find is that my current triathlon bicycle does make it worse and I'd like this thread to focus more on that side.
So far the following points have been brought up:
- bicycle geometry (kinda hard to compare this across models, I'm still not sure what things to look for specifically)
- base bar position
- hydration and storage (presumably lower and behind positions are better that BTA)
- how bike fit affects rider weight placement on the bike
- bicycle weight and weight distribution (Tri bikes seem to have completely disregarded this part lately. It's interesting to see QR and BMC have thought about it)
- wheel choice