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Whose neighborhood sucks for TT/tri bikes?
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I live in a part of town with a bazillion turns, a bazillion 30 second to 1 minute 6%/9% grade hills, etc.... Constantly out of aero and into a hill gear. Constantly a turn or stop at the bottom of a hill. No 4-corner blocks without a blind corner or weird hill or issue. It's a great part of town for road bike climbing and "handling skills" work. I love riding the road bike in the area. Imagine the hilly and curvy crit course of your nightmares.

TT, not so much. The suck. Plus, every freaking flat or false flat they've installed all the million traffic calming 4-way stops.

Sometimes driving somewhere or riding to the TT friendly spaces is time consuming enough you can't make that happen. And you live in a small house where your Zwift setup isn't always freely accessible.

I have spent a LOT of time in ridewithgps trying to find something palatable out the front door. The best I've got so far is still 5mi ride to get there and has a sketch intersection per lap.

Who else lives in this scenario?

This is my random thought or complaint of the day.....
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Re: Whose neighborhood sucks for TT/tri bikes? [burnthesheep] [ In reply to ]
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I have the opposite problem :D where I live it's super flat, limited traffic, and it's only about a 20-25 minute ride to a 7 mile causeway where you can pretty easily do tt intervals. It is, however, super boring on the road bike, which is my current main focus, so that's a bit of a bummer. Oh, and all the good strava segments have been ridden by the tour of Utah, so i'm never going to get any of them.
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Re: Whose neighborhood sucks for TT/tri bikes? [burnthesheep] [ In reply to ]
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I have a couple of regular routes that I ride, depending on how far I want to go. The short one (19km) has a massive 2.5km stretch of flat road, the longer 46km loop has almost no flat road, and very little that I would even call a false flat (maybe 2kms?)

That's OK, I'd rather ride the roadie anyway.

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Re: Whose neighborhood sucks for TT/tri bikes? [burnthesheep] [ In reply to ]
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To many potholes and SUVs / minivans in my area.
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Re: Whose neighborhood sucks for TT/tri bikes? [burnthesheep] [ In reply to ]
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Yuup. Terrain here is fantastic for road riding if you ignore the terrible bike infrastructure, generally poor pavement quality, and big aggressive trucks. No real enjoyable place to ride fast and focus on staying in aero. I definitely miss Albuquerque for that reason.

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Re: Whose neighborhood sucks for TT/tri bikes? [burnthesheep] [ In reply to ]
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Similar here. There are a few 3-5 mile stretches. But otherwise every mile or two having to climb a sharp, steep, short climb. Or stop at intersection.

Vi on many of my rides is 1.25+.
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Re: Whose neighborhood sucks for TT/tri bikes? [burnthesheep] [ In reply to ]
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burnthesheep wrote:
Whose neighborhood sucks for TT/tri bikes?


EVERY NEIGHBORHOOD

TT bikes, while looking cool, are just lame for daily riding. And I live in Tucson where I can get out on mine for 5-15 mile stretches of uninterrupted bolted to the aerobars riding.

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Re: Whose neighborhood sucks for TT/tri bikes? [burnthesheep] [ In reply to ]
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Just bought a road bike frame for this reason, I have to spend five miles on the base bar just to get out of the city. And when I settle into those aero bars all the accountants in their F-150s buzz by me on their rush to get back to their exurbs McMansions

Strava
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Re: Whose neighborhood sucks for TT/tri bikes? [burnthesheep] [ In reply to ]
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I feel you dude. Nice to know I'm not alone. Majorly sucks. I don't know what the answer is. Other than races, I rarely ride my TT rig outdoors, and as a result and not as comfortable pushing my TT bike to the max on race days. I always spend too much time on my basebars occasionally screaming into the wind. It's my biggest area for improvement. It makes racing (remember when we used to have races?) less fun. It's too bad.
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Re: Whose neighborhood sucks for TT/tri bikes? [wintershade] [ In reply to ]
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I've spent the last two years outside on the TT bike and I now prefer it to my road bike especially since I'm not doing group rides anymore. Yes, the pavement sucks, the traffic is dangerous and time on the aerobars is short but you do attain a skill / comfort level that works on race day.

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Re: Whose neighborhood sucks for TT/tri bikes? [Fuller] [ In reply to ]
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I think it would improve a lot for me personally if I can gift myself Di2 at some point. Mechanical makes the neighborhood really crap.

If I could shift from the base bar, that would improve a lot.

I've got some little laps that I can bomb for a bit. Just that lately at work haven't been able to take the TT bike out at lunch. The facility backs up to a rural road not much used that for 1/2 its length has a massive shoulder "just in case". Usually there I'll do a 10mi try, some intervals or such. Pavement isn't "fastest" in the world, but it works.

I get it, people want their kids safe at home (but screw the cyclists on the road) by installing their "traffic calming" speed humps and crap. But that stuff is annoying AF. They need a law that those should have a 2 foot gap in them for bicycles and motorcycles.
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Re: Whose neighborhood sucks for TT/tri bikes? [burnthesheep] [ In reply to ]
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Re: Whose neighborhood sucks for TT/tri bikes? [burnthesheep] [ In reply to ]
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Oh, you have to do this. I live downtown ATL and the difference when I upgraded the TT bike was night and day. It's still tough to ride everyday intown, but 5-10 miles out I can get aero for my long rides. Last year, I was on my road bike during the week a majority of the time, then on the weekends rode the TT.
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Re: Whose neighborhood sucks for TT/tri bikes? [burnthesheep] [ In reply to ]
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I live out in the country but its crazy hilly so a tt bike isn't the best. I have one "less hilly" section of road I do repeats on but I can only eek out about 5 minutes of hammer time before the next hill so I just go back and forth on that section of road. Boring but gets the job done.
Another thing that sucks about the hills is that I can never really get in an easy ride. Always grinding up an incline......
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Re: Whose neighborhood sucks for TT/tri bikes? [ In reply to ]
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The time I often go out to ride is in a lighter traffic volume time when folks are probably home from work but eating dinner.

Given that, why does it bother me more to use a "boulevard" of 4-lane with center turn versus a 2-lane road of the exact same speed limit? Once in a while I find myself on one for maybe a minute on a cut-thru part of a route. When cars do come, it's never more cars than on a normal 2-lane road. So same volume.

I guess I feel like if two come side by side they won't be able to go around. On 2 lane, usually they're not meeting someone head on and go around. Maybe that's it. Then again, if it's not two side by side.......they have a whole extra lane to take.

I would be totally set if they did some separate bike lanes on the boulevards by my house. I could blast those pretty well.
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