My current bike is a 12 year old Bianchi Eros with Shimano RSX triple, downtube shifters, stock Mavic wheels, and an old Scott aerobar. It is a steel frame.
Last weekend I did a sprint duathlon and there was also a tri at the same time. I easily won the du on the bike. I won the du overall as well. When looking at all the tri results I would have finished in the top 20 on the bike.
How much faster could I expect to be on a new tri geometry bike with race wheels? 10 seconds per mile? 20? 30? More? I did 1 sprint tri this year and finished 5th in AG but may have been higher with a faster bike split.
How much would a new bike help my run? In the du my second run was 1 minute slower than my first run. Would I maybe only be 30-45 seconds slower?
I didn’t train at all on the bike this year. I only did maybe 1-2 rides per month. Next year I plan on doing more tris. I like to be competitive, but have to wonder if spending $3000 or so on a bike will really make that much difference. Improvements in my swim and/or run wouldn’t be nearly as costly.
Well… a new wheelset could save you some time. In a sprint i’d guess maybe 30 seconds. A new tri geometry bike could also save you same time if it’s lighter and the bike course has some hills in the middle…
but you know what?
“it’s not about the bike…”
( a new bike with fancy race wheels for a sprint race, does a good mental job that can mean another 30 seconds… )
I’d say you should improve your swimming, then your run and then your bike… but I think that’s just me
I saw by far the greatest single improvement when I spent $250 on a sleeveless wetsuit.
Three thousand dollars will get you a pretty nice bike, but it will not turn you into Superman. I thought differently when I bought a Cervelo P2, but it never really made any difference. If the bike fits you and allows for a good, comfortable position on the aerobars, then I would replace the downtube shifters for bar end shifters and train, train, train.
However, if you want to go to a more forward seat position, then just keep your road bike the way it is and do a lot of research into what bike will comfortably fit your body type.
If you go that route I think you would be hard put to find a better bike Ves’ stock $1700 dollar no-frills Yaqui Manzanita. Find a good pair of deep rim aero wheels off eBay and you have a rocket for less than three grand.
I’m getting a sense that spending big bucks on a bike is pointless for an age grouper. Other than the coolness factor, why do so many people buy these bikes if there is so little to be gained timewise?
O.K., a new bike is a kind of motivation, too. And this STI-system is very comfortable. I never will miss it again. But the most important part of a fast racing system are your legs and the position on the bike.
FWIW, here is my personal experience. This spring I upgrade from a 18 year old Univega road bike to a Trek 5200. I had an immediate 10 to 15 sec per mile improvement. The bike is much lighter but I ride on pretty flat ground so I attribute 90% of the speed increase to the wheels which were much more aero than my old ones - 44 flat spokes really do slice through the air much better than 72 round spokes. The other 10% I attribute to to the STI shifting. I now shift gears about twice as often as I did with the old friction downtube shifters and that allows me to spend a lot more time in my ideal power band.
My new bike definitely is cool and my old one was falling apart so I had to upgrade. But, you can get a noticeble performance boast just by picking up a set of more aero wheels.
The last time I asked my LBS about race wheels I was told I would need to upgrade all my drivetrain components because my stuff would not be compatible. Does this sound right? My downtube shifters are indexed so they click when I shift and I have no trouble with them. It would be nice to have the shifting on the aerobars though.
Is it worthwhile to try to upgrade my current bike with wheels, etc. rather than get a new bike?
“I didn’t train at all on the bike this year. I only did maybe 1-2 rides per month”
That says it all. You’ve got to ride more.
It seems that you’re having no problems running off a steep angle bike so the steep angle issue is probably mute to you. Some people can run just as well off a road bike as a tri bike. My wife is one of them. Simon Lessing and Luc VanLierde are obviously others. However, many people find it easier to run off a steeper angle. For myself, I find my hamstrings as being much less tight into the start of the run off a steeper angle. My actual run times don’t seem much faster (they suck any ways), but it feels better at the start off the tri bike.
Aero bars and wheels are the two things that will give you the most bang for the buck and you don’t have to spend a lot if you don’t wish to. Get CH Aero disc cover and a used Hed Jet, Cx, Campy Shamal or Specialized tri spoke for the front and you’re state of the art on a budget.
If I make a suggestion based upon what you’ve told us, a good bike for you to be looking at might be the Cervelo Soloist.
Aero components do give some “free” speed. Here’s a good article about it.
Sometime in the early 90’s the “standard” width for rear hubs changed. They got wider to accommodate more gears. This required a wider rear triangle spacing. Consult a bike expert for the details but yes, it may very well be that your bike has the older, narrower rear triangle spacing which is too narrow for modern hubs. (If you have a steel framed bike, often the rear triangle is flexible enough to shove a wider hub in.) You probably have a 6 speed freewheel which won’t fit on your new wheels. You’ll need a cassette and they don’t come in 6 speeds so you’ll have to upgrade to more gears which means you’ll probably need new shifters . . . . . . .
My advice is - with old bikes, like old computers, it is probably best not to put a lot of money into upgrades. It will cost almost as much to upgrade your current bike as it will to just buy a new bike. Either stick with what you have or buy a new bike but don’t dump any serious money into your current bike.
The last time I asked my LBS about race wheels I was told I would need to upgrade all my drivetrain components because my stuff would not be compatible. Does this sound right? My downtube shifters are indexed so they click when I shift and I have no trouble with them. It would be nice to have the shifting on the aerobars though.
Is it worthwhile to try to upgrade my current bike with wheels, etc. rather than get a new bike?
No. That’s not right at all. Absolutely everything in your current drivetrain will work with new wheels. However, RSX from the early 90’s was probably 7-speed. Any new wheel you buy today will be 8/9 speed. You need to get a 4.5mm spacer to use a 7-speed cassette on an 8/9 speed freehub. Even if you want to upgrade to 9-speed, all you need is new shifters, cassette, and chain. All other drivetrain components will work fine.
IMO, tri geometry is probably a little faster (maybe 1 second per mile), but not always. My fastest triathlon bike splits have been on a road bike with aerobars. Races wheels should give you 2-3 seconds per mile, though, and might be worth looking into.
I know I need to train more on the bike. I guess what I was getting at is that even with very little training and an old bike I was still very competitive. The bike has always been my strongest event and I just take it for granted that I’ll do well.
I may have to look at the disk covers you mentioned and a decent used front racing wheel. Those things and some newer aerobars with bar end shifters could make it possible to go faster even with my limited training and my old bike.
I’m not a great runner either. It’s my weakest discipline. All my training the past two years has been for marathons. I have done no training for shorter races. But all the miles I’m running has made me a more efficient runner and my race times for shorter races have improved. I think I started running too late in life to ever be able to achieve real speed.
I’ve just heard so much about how all the expensive bike gear is supposed to make a person faster and how having a tri bike would help the run. It seems like much of what I’ve heard is just marketing. Or is it? Has anyone had great improvement on the bike and run after getting a new tri bike?
"Has anyone had great improvement on the bike and run after getting a new tri bike? "
The yard stick I have to use is the 30 kms bike split on the first sprint tri I ever did. The first year I rode my old ancient steel 12 sp with clipped pedals, downtube shifters, box 36 sp rims and no aero bars.
The second year I rode the same bike but now with aero bars, clipless pedals, moved the shifters, used aero wheels from ebay and was nine minutes faster.
Since then I spent $$$$ on the TCR and P2K. Each is about 2-3 minutes faster again.
Someone else posted this here a while ago, I dropped it into my favorites because I can see the future and knew you would be asking this exact question ;).
why do so many people buy these bikes if there is so little to be gained timewise?
OK, this is very unscientific, but I’ve just gone from a cheap-n-cheerful MTB (w/ slicks) to a new Cervelo Soloist Team.
I was out for a ride with a friend last night, chatting away, totally cruising, when he mentioned that we were doing 34km/h. I was not making any effort at all. If I’d been doing 28km/h on the MTB it would have required quite a bit more effort and I wouldn’t have been chatting away.
Interesting! Spending lots of money on race wheels and tri geometry would only result in less than a minute faster for a sprint tri/du. I would bet I could achieve the same thing by simply losing about 10 pounds of body weight and a bit more training.
I’ve been lusting for a nice tri bike for the past several years thinking it would make me at least 2-3 minutes faster in a sprint. I think I’ll try the disk covers, front race wheel and bar end shifters instead. I’ll probably spend less than $500 and end up with almost all the increased performance.
