I am doing a 1/2 ironman on sept 7 - 13 days from today. I am thinking about adding areo bars to my bike so I can go faster. The course is the Big Kahuna which has rolling hills. Do you think the areo bars will make a big difference and do I have enough time to get use to them and using new muscles from being in a areo positon? Any recomendations on what type to buy?
please help!
Thanks
The Big Kahuna course is one of my favorite training rides. I spend about 80% of the ride on the aerobars. The wind blows north to south on most days and it starts early. They got lucky last year and had a very light breeze. I would hate to not have aerobars and run into the typical course headwinds for the first 23 miles. That said, changing this late could screw you up
Definately get aero bars. It won’t take long to adapt and you’ll be a km or two faster average speed. Assuming you have a road bike get aero bars that are designed for a roa bike geometry. You’ll be too stretched out on those designed for a tri bike geometry. A good recommendation for a road bike would be Profile Jammer GT’s.
I say get 'em. Try them out, and see how you feel in your workouts leading up to the race. If you don’t feel comfortable in them, or you think they’ll negatively impact your race, take 'em off and race without them. That being said, remember, clip-ons will be easier to add/remove, so you may not want to do this if you’re planning on getting an integrated aero-bar set like the Profile Carbon X.
Will they make a difference? Yes, especially into a headwind and on the backside of a hill.
As far as what to get… consider what features you want. Lighter weight? Bar-end shifting? Flip-up arm rest pads? Check out Nashbar (www.nashbar.com) for several types of aerobars.
I bought a Profile Design Airstryke with flip-up pads. While I like the flip-ups, a nagging problem keeps occuring. Specifically, the pin that goes in the joint allowing the pads to flip up keeps working loose, and I know eventually I’ll lose one. I did a race yesterday, and halfway through the bike, I realized I was losing the pin on one of my arm rests. Not a good feeling, since the armrest would fall off if that happened. The other thing I don’t like about the Airstryke is that it’s a closed unit, which means no bar-end shifting. You can add the SwiftShift and some downtube shifters to make aero shifting possible, but it’s a little clunky-looking, and has not proven to be a great solution. The shifting is a little awkward, and you sometimes have to “fine-tune” the front derailleur after shifting to a different cog on the rear cassette. I’m sure I’ll get a new set of aerobars in the near future that will allow me to use bar-end shifting form the aero position.
Steve