This is my bike, or rather, a representation of my 2005 Giant TCR Aero-1:
NEW PICTURES BELOW…
I love this bike. I ride it as hard and as often as I can. It is stiff, fast, and never lets me down. Anyway, is this bike considered a “tri-bike” with regard to seat angle, etc. or can it ever be used as a road bike? What I am getting at is, it is my only bike that is worth racing on and if I wanted to do road races or crits, can I use it? I realize the clip-on aerobars have to come off and be re-fitted, but can I use this bike in this way or should I convince the wife to let me get a real roadie?
Was this the 75 degree TCR? If so it was meant as a sort of multi-sport position bike of about 75/76 degrees, sort of like riding a Cervelo Soloist on the forward post position. With a rear setback seat post and you should be OK for road racing. I’d run a neutral setback for tris.
One like you’ve got on the bike (or so it appears in the photo). That will put you in a slacker more roadie position than a neutral or forward position seat post that you might use for tris.
I had one of those for a while, I recall it having geometry identical to the road TCR, although that was 8 years ago and the geometry may have changed at some point. I had some team mates who raced them in crits with drop bars, they were super stiff with the rear gusseting, but not forgiving on rough pavement.
Your seat does look a bit high but hard to tell from a photo.
I raced on an early model road geometry TCR several years ago but used a neutral set back seat post with the seat slide forward to get to the 75/76 position. The frame was a bit slacker than yours, around 73 degrees if I remember right. It was a decent bike, actually faster than my tri geometry QR Kilo for me. Both bikes had big round tubing so frame aerodynamics didn’t matter in either case. In old pictures my position looked quite similiar to yours except my seat being a bit lower.
I should have probably started this thread with a photo of my actual bike instead of the stock picture. Please excuse the background mess…
Me on the bike: is my seat too high Or is it now too low?
Yo-
Judging by the Bento Box and the rear mounted bottle cages, you have a tri bike. Obviously that’s your intent with the aero bars.
If you want to use the same bike for road and crits, you’ll need a pencil/paper and patience to make adjustments each time you want to utilize the same bike for a different type of race.
Not that it can’t be done, but I like to RIDE much more than tinker with setup.
I have the bike set up for the New Orleans HIM but after that race, I want to switch to doing more cycling as opposed to 3 sports. I would like to get into some road races and maybe even crits. When the velodrome in BR is finished its repairs, I want to try some track stuff too.
So, I am hoping to re-fit my bike to better suit me as a road bike. I will remove the clip-ons, the rear bottle holders, and, yes, the bento box, but I was wondering what I would need to do specifically regarding seat positioning and so forth. One guy earlier was refering to a “neutral” set up, so does this mean I should be moving the seat further back on the rails or what?
