Are road bikes and tri bikes too opposed in geometry for one bike to work well in both disciplines? I am looking to replace an old aluminum roadie from the mid 00’s with something new. From a bike fitment perspective, is it even reasonable to try to have a bike that can be fairly optimal in both positions.
I know the seat tube angle would be a hurdle, but the road bike I’m looking at has a seat tube angle of 76 degrees, and moving the seat forward an inch puts the seat at 77.5 degrees with my inseam. Still, stack would have to be modified, like the clip ons would need spacers, and as for reach I haven’t figured out how to have the road bars and pads work well. What do you think of this? Is it all a fools errand? I would like to hopefully race both competitively, and I know this is something many have faced, so I would appreciate hearing what y’all think.
You could do your road drop bar tape such that you can unclamp the brifters and replace them with a pre-setup basebar/stem combo and clamp the brifters onto those.
The cabling might be ugly at the expense of quickly swapping it over, but for a race you could bar tape the cables on either bar setup or something to hide them. But train with them just appeased by 30 seconds worth of electrical tape.
Otherwise for reach, you’re into a stem change to fix that. That’s what I did years and years ago trying this for TT.
“Work well†will be relative. It won’t be as simple as two bikes. To get a tri position out of a road bike you need a different seatpost, saddle, and an extreme stem in addition to the tri bars. To make this easy to change you really need a round seatpost, and external cable routing so you can just transplant the entire cockpit without having to set it up each time. Neither of which will likely be on a modern or aero frame
I recently added aerobars to my cheap road bike since my pricey TT bike is in the shop for a prolonged period awaiting some parts.
I guess I’m one of those that doesn’t have a big change between my TT bike position vs road bike, as I feel like I’m pretty similar and completely comfortable on the road bike. I’m sure this means I’m suboptimally fitted for one of them, which is likely the road bike as that wasn’t fit-measured to me whereas the TT bike was, but I’m surprised at how smoothly and naturally I take to the aerobar position on my roadie. 22mph training ride speed is not a problem on that roadie+aerobars!
It probably depends how much you want to compromise, but if you don’t need that uber-perfect TT or road bike position, you can probably find one that works pretty well for both.
Here is an idea that I employ on both of my all-road/gravel bikes. One is rigid for mostly road and especially climbing high (above 8,000 feet) mountains where the roads are terrible with occasional light gravel. The other is a drop bar full-suspension bike with fast tires and a smaller front wheel to make it ride more like a road bike. Both have aerobars because the wind always blows and I am always alone.
I use the Redshift sports seat post that changes position by about 4 degrees. To achieve a lower aero position without having everything else off-kilter I use hi-rise bars (my fave is the Soma Condor bar with 5cm ride). I’ve zip-tied some high density foam on the two sides of the stem where the stem is and the curb of the riser bar forms the pocket for my aerobar armrests.
As someone pointed out, most modern aero frames have proprietary seatposts so the REdshift post might not work, in which case for convenience your probably need two posts/saddles in their respective road and aero positions.
You just position the height of the riser bar where you want it for normal riding and then remove your aerobars for road racing. You will need a low enough head tube to acheive the position, or a negative rise stem to drop the front end.
If this does not make sense, PM me and I will send you a pic.
You could do your road drop bar tape such that you can unclamp the brifters and replace them with a pre-setup basebar/stem combo and clamp the brifters onto those.
The cabling might be ugly at the expense of quickly swapping it over, but for a race you could bar tape the cables on either bar setup or something to hide them. But train with them just appeased by 30 seconds worth of electrical tape.
Otherwise for reach, you’re into a stem change to fix that. That’s what I did years and years ago trying this for TT.
People have talked about having “one bike to rule them all” for a little while now: one bike that you can change for gravel, road and tri.
Handlebars are a big obstacle as you pointed out. I’d love to see a way to detach the cables just in front of the stem with some sort of clip, and then you could change the stem/handlebars and plug the cables back in. Some sort of an easy connection that would let you swap handlebars in minutes. With the inner brake cable, it doesn’t seem very likely as it would difficult to separate that into 2 pieces. I think it’s a solvable problem, but you also wouldn’t sell a ton of them.
Before people ask: Why do this? The short answer: I can afford middle of the pack bikes and components. I’ve never ridden on Di2. If I could consolidate all my bikes into one, I could get one amazing bike and then just shell out extra for wheelsets, seat/post and bars.
No idea on this, but a hydraulic quick disconnect does exist and if you paired that up with SRAM AXS wireless shifters you potentially could have a rather swappable front end setup. The connectors do look a bit bulky and not sure how the SRAM setup would play with different shifters for each front end setup. A single rear running Di2 wire might be easier, but also not certain how that setup would react to the shifters being switched out from under it.
People have talked about having “one bike to rule them all” for a little while now: one bike that you can change for gravel, road and tri.
I guess it would have to be 1x to keep the “one ring” metaphor going?
With all the monkeying around to convert from road to tri , and back again, wouldn’t you end up with a poorly fitting Frankenbike that’s “good enough” for both but not really great at either?
Taylor Knibb Exactly. If a pro with little experience at 70.3 can podium at WC on a road bike, most of us will see far less difference between a roadie with clip ons and our dedicated tri bikes than we want to believe.
I had a similar “problem†when starting to do triathlon and bought a Felt AR5, which I still ride as my road bike.
I’m not sure if the new version does have the same feature, but the old one at least can get you to a decent Tri position by turning the seatpost.
I’ve completed several 70.3 and felt pretty comfortable with my position. Of course, it’s not as good as a proper Tri bike, but a great compromise if you can’t have two specialized bikes for road a triathlon.
People have talked about having “one bike to rule them all” for a little while now: one bike that you can change for gravel, road and tri.
I guess it would have to be 1x to keep the “one ring” metaphor going?
With all the monkeying around to convert from road to tri , and back again, wouldn’t you end up with a poorly fitting Frankenbike that’s “good enough” for both but not really great at either?
One ring indeed! Well played
I think you would end up with something that excels in one area, is mediocre in another and a frankenbike in a third area i.e. excellent gravel bike, ok road bike and a compromise as a tri bike. It could still be fun though.
It does look bulky but I imagine that it’s a solvable problem if there was a big enough market for it. It goes against the N+1 philosophy, so it might not be a popular idea.
I don’t think I could win TTs on a road bike. I also couldn’t race competitively a TT frame in a Crit , and it’s suboptimal for a RR
I personally still use an older TT bike that’s pretty dang fast and spend my money on road / gravel bikes. You could keep your old roadie and buy a new TT, or maybe go w older frame and dial your fit it to go fast
If I wasn’t trying to be Uber competitive at either sport / event, I’m sure I could do it just fine tho
Before people ask: Why do this? The short answer: I can afford middle of the pack bikes and components. I’ve never ridden on Di2. If I could consolidate all my bikes into one, I could get one amazing bike and then just shell out extra for wheelsets, seat/post and bars.
The problem with this statement that is that a mediocre tt bike and mediocre road bike will be far better at each task than a more expensive bike that is converted for a purpose that it wasn’t designed for. Road bikes and tt bikes are just too different. If I wanted to achieve my tt fit on my aero road bike which has a 90mm stem, I’d need something in the 160mm+ range. The head tube angle a would be all wrong and I’d have too much weight over the front wheel. It would handle like junk. The best aero road bikes also don’t have a round seatpost that can be rotated. Likewise a TT bike with super short stem will not handle well as a road bike.
The combo bike could be more expensive than the two mediocre bikes, but it wouldn’t be better at its secondary job.
You could have a custom Ti bike built with dime signs that are half way between aero and tt dimensions, but that wouldn’t be aero for tt or light for rr
In 05 I bought a cervelo soloist (aluminum - carbon wasn’t out yet). Seatpost setup meant you could have 2 seats that swapped out quickly, clamp on your aerobars, and you were in a good aero position. But even then, the shifters were over on the drops. So it wasn’t ideal. It made sense for me at the time, since I was new to the sport, but it was limited.
I was riding on a TT/tria frame and now want to use a road bike. The tria bike must be sold soon because of monetary reasons. From time to time on flat courses, I would really like to install an aero clip-on and to move the saddle forward for a more aggressive aero position.
The aero seatpost S27 on my new second-hand Canyon Aeroad however cannot be flipped (eg. such as the Argon18 two-way post), neither can it be replaced with e.g. redshift or a profile fast forward.
Does anyeone know of an alternative? Are there any (secure) adapters that bring the saddle even further forward?