I vacation in Canada that is great for a gravel bike but awful for a road bike. Has anyone converted a Gravel bike to a Tri-Bike for training purposes?
I was simply thinking of purchasing a gravel bike and asking my local bike mechanic (who is fantastic) to set the dimensions exactly to my Tri-Bike set up.
Thanks!!
What brand and model saddle do you use?
BMC Time Machine and SMP saddle. I’d buy any gravel bike to make it work.
Thanks!
I will have an article on how I did this in about 2 days. Watch the home page for sure 
My new aerobars I tested recently on gravel and with the foam, design for full arm support it is incredibly comfy in chip seal, etc road,
Maybe a review in the future if I send it?
Awesome! Looking forward to seeing your article.
Not as crazy as it sounds! A lot of gravel riders use aero bars already, and the slack(er) front end should make gravel bikes a lot more suitable for the conversion than road bikes. The main thing you’d have to figure out is how to get your saddle far enough forward.
You’re unlikely to get the saddle as far forward on a gravel bike as a tri bike. But you don’t particularly need to (or necessarily want to given the handling impact).
If you use an aerobar like the Profile Design Neosonic/ergo/50a you should be able to adopt an aero position that has the same hip angle as your tri bike, which means you’ll be training the same range of motion.
My intent in designing the Neosonic bracket was to make it possible to add aerobars to a road/gravel/packing setup without making other changes (sometimes a shorter stem is required, depends on the rider)
In this way you’d be able to use the bike for gravel riding without compromising handling and be able to practice on aerobars when the road suits. Just not great for pedalling out of the saddle with the armpads that far back.
Redshift has a whole setup called “Switch Aero” that is designed with gravel in mind. They have easy to install/remove clip-on aerobars and a seatpost that allows you to switch between a standard and more aero (forward) saddle position.
I haven’t used them - but thought it was interesting. I have definitely considered getting the clip on bars for my gravel - it is nice to get off the roads and not worry about being buzzed by cars on some of my longer rides and getting into the aerobars is a nice break.