My daughter has a Cervelo S2 which she uses for her draft-legal races. She also uses it for non draft legal races, mostly sprint distance. I recently out a Profile Design T2+ aerobar on it for her non draft legal races. She’s pretty fast and normally podiums overall for female in some of the local races here.
I think she still has room to improve on the bike by going more aero. So my question is that for sprint and oly distance races, should I keep and continue to tweak this setup (e.g. move saddle forward more with the 2-position seatpost, different aerobar, etc), or should I looking into a dedicated tri bike? And if dedicated tri bike, then what make/model would you suggest that would be better than her current setup?
Going from a road bike to a tri bike was such a huge upgrade for me I can’t imagine not doing it if triathlon is your thing. Even more so for anything longer than sprint. Not only was I faster on the bike, my legs felt better for the run. I’ll bet the advice you’ll get is to try out a bunch of bikes and find out what fits best and then find the best deal you can. It took me six months to find a P3 in my area that worked for me.
I have a S5 (with clip on aerobars) that I’ve used on a few short tri’s when they are hilly courses. On a sprint tri, one guy in my AG and on his tricked out tri bike with disc in the rear would take me on the flats and downhill, but I would blow by him on the uphills. I did out bike him, but not by much. Fortunately I left him in the dust on the run by get 2nd in my AG and only 20 seconds from 1st. Even a better observation was that I matched my younger friend who is a much much better biker than me so I feel confident that my choice of bike that day was a huge difference maker.
So it depends on how much money you want to invest in your daughter. It might not make that much difference in the short races. Definitely better in the longer and flatter bike courses (IMHO).
I would say there are a few factors here. 1.) how old is she? I’m going to assume she is still growing in which case you will be buying a new bike soon to fit her better anyway, so why buy a second bike now just to replace them both later? 2.) is she mostly racing draft-legal races? If that is her focus, it makes sense to keep the S2 and leave it like it is and just deal with the bit of loss on the non-drafting races 3.) check bestbikesplit.com and see how much of a savings it would actually be for her. I doubt it will be most than a minute or two, which is big for those at the top, but then again… see points one and two… is that extra $800-2k worth it for a few races a year…
Also, my 2 cents on adjusting the S2 for non-draft legal racing, I wouldn’t mess with the fit. Having raced a few seasons on a road bike, I was strictly doing non-drafting races and it was still a pain to get the fit right. Trying to go back and forth would mess with my head, not to mention my body. I would just leave it set for draft racing, ITU legal aero bars and all. That way you can really dial in that fit and get her as aero as possible for the draft legal races.
I would say there are a few factors here. 1.) how old is she? I’m going to assume she is still growing in which case you will be buying a new bike soon to fit her better anyway, so why buy a second bike now just to replace them both later? 2.) is she mostly racing draft-legal races? If that is her focus, it makes sense to keep the S2 and leave it like it is and just deal with the bit of loss on the non-drafting races 3.) check bestbikesplit.com and see how much of a savings it would actually be for her. I doubt it will be most than a minute or two, which is big for those at the top, but then again… see points one and two… is that extra $800-2k worth it for a few races a year…
Also, my 2 cents on adjusting the S2 for non-draft legal racing, I wouldn’t mess with the fit. Having raced a few seasons on a road bike, I was strictly doing non-drafting races and it was still a pain to get the fit right. Trying to go back and forth would mess with my head, not to mention my body. I would just leave it set for draft racing, ITU legal aero bars and all. That way you can really dial in that fit and get her as aero as possible for the draft legal races.
All really good points, and thanks for the post. I think I am going to stick with the S2 with the PD T2+DL (ITU legal) for now until next year and reassess. I don’t think she’s going to grow that much more, may be another inch max. What prompted me for looking into this because she was passed by a lot of people on tri bikes during the sprint races, and being competitive, she wasn’t very happy. I am lucky to have a kid who’s really into tri, so I am going to continue to encourage and help her in any way I can. I truly believe tri is a lifestyle and has life long benefits.
I think you should consider getting the two position seatpost for the S2.
I have an S5 with 2 seatposts one for road and one for tri position. This way there’s no adjustments other than in and out.
The process of going from 2 bikes to one on an alloy soloist.
There are two potential losses of speed in this kind of setup. The first is positional, the second is from the aerodynamics of the road bike and setup itself.
To address the positional concerns, you can start with aerobars as you did. The second thing is to start playing with dropping the bars, moving them forward, and moving the saddle forward. You/her likely have a great road bike position, don’t toss it completely out the window. Instead, if you decide to try forward and bars down, treat it more as a second bike, that she should ride enough to be comfortable but the solution should be easy enough to switch back and forth that she can ride her S2 as a road bike a lot of the time. The limiter with using a road bike in the more forward and low position is front end weight and handling.
The second speed loss from using a road bike in triathlons is equipment and aerodynamics. The main parts of the equation being the drop bars and shifters. You can solve this one of two ways. First, you could try to get a an aero drop bar, and it may save a handful of seconds. Second, and a lot more work, is to have a full tri basebar, brakes, shifters setup that could be swapped on. Lots of time to be saved with this route in the course, but again, also a lot of work.
If she’s still growing I’d stick with the S2 and put a better front end on it. Omega X brakes, and maybe something like the 3T Revo. If you upgrade her to E-Tap and buy an extra brake wedge for the front you can change cockpits in 5-10 minutes easy peasy
That is a great suggest actually. The rear brake is a bit of a bugger to change over but other than that it can be pretty quick. 2 minutes for the front and maybe 8 minutes for the back with a good bear in hand.
