Hello again,
I dont know if any of you read my last post but it was about whether to buy a new Cervelo P1 or a used Cervelo Soloist Team. Well as the title says I went with the Soloist Team. As I’m very interested in triathlons I’d like to make some adjustments to make the bike better suited for them:
The first one is whether to put clip on aero bars on the drop bars or get a whole dedicated aero base bar that includes aero bars that I can switch out with my road bar. I also didnt know if I put aero bars on the road bars should i still put the seat post head in the forward position and get a new saddle. I am just confused whether you need to get two sets of fitting measurements: one to ride comfortably on the drop bar and one to ride comfortably in the aero bars. Any help would be greatly appreciated on how best to suit the Soloist for riding in the aero tri position.
Also, the bike came with Mavic Kyrsium ES. I looked these up and they retail for about 1000 a pair. So I listed them on craigs list for 700 to try to buy more aero wheels (such as the sram s60 or 80, or Mavic Cosmic Carbones). I think paying 500 dollars to get solid aero tri wheels would be a good investment but does anyone think I should keep the original wheels it was bought with.
Thanks for all the help and sorry about the tons of question
See, if you’d just listened to my lone dissenting voice from the earlier thread (the one that thinks triathletes training solely for triathlons should really be riding triathlon bikes) then you wouldn’t have this conundrum, would you…shame on you for flip-flopping and going with the popular vote.
Set your bike up as a roadie and ride the hell out of it for two years. Forget anything else and become one with yourself on the bike, get fit, learn something about bikes and the entire process. Crush the dreams of others on their P3s, and when you finally know you NEED a dedicated tri bike, go for it.
While you’re at it, have someone build up a set of 32 spoke tubular training wheels.
I’ll second the “ride it as a road bike until you know you need a tri-bike” reply. I did my first couple of tri’s on a Felt tri-bike and discovered I really sucked at handling the tri-bike. I bought a Soloist Team and rode it as it came from LBS, in a road set up. I train more and more with the Felt and when I compete I’m much less of a death trap for the other competitors;-)
Thanks for all the advice I think I’ll just get clip ons for now. And also does anyone have anyway in my wheel situation: should I sell mine for 700 and get some SRAM s60 or s80 or some mavic cosmic
carbones.
Were I to do anything about wheels, I would go the opposite direction and get a nice pair of 32 spoke training wheels.
Forget about the rest; just go ride. When you get to the point where you NEED wheels, you’ll know (and at that point, you’ll know enough to make the proper decision). Wheels will not make you better on the bike, only time will.
I have the same bike and ride it 95% of the time in the road position–no clip ons or fancy wheels–as most of my riding is done in fast groups. When I race it in tris–2 to 3 times a year–a put on the clip ons, pull out the road seat and insert (one bolt), and replace with tri seat and forward post insert (already set up for a slightly more forward position; the tri seat has a soft nose, also). If it’s not windy, I run a disk cover on my Flashpoint rear wheel (built cheap from parts on ebay). The cover costs 60 dollars from wheelbuilder.com and easily goes on in about 40 minutes. If it’s windy, I don’t use the cover. My front race wheel is an older Zipp 440 tubular also bought used on ebay. No need to fork out big dough for fancy wheels. Regular training wheels are old Rolfs on clinchers. They must be 10 years old but work fine.
The most important thing, said many, many times here on this list, is to find a comfortable position on whatever you ride, and to develop power and endurance in that position. The idea that you need a steep angled tri bike in order to run effectively off the bike is belied by the ITU and XTerra racers, who post blazing runs off road and mountain bikes. Just practice running off the bike you have.
