One year experiment: Tri bike to road bike

Triathlon Forum
1

Last October I bought my first real tri bike (an '02 QR PicanTi). Set it up at 78 degrees per Dan the Man and just love it. Have ridden it exclusively from last Oct to the Big Kahuna race in Santa Cruz last weekend. Figured my body needed to adapt to this new position. Living in NorCal I ride year round. Rode it on mountains, flats and everything in between.

All this time my old Kestrel 200ems road bike hung from garage ceiling. Well this weekend I pulled it down and went for a nice ride up the Mayacamas mountains in northern Sonoma County. It was interesting to ride a road geometry bike after a year off of it. My observations:

  1. The first hour of so felt kind of strange. Seems like the road bike worked my upper quads and hip flexors much more than the tri bike. Any one else notice this when moving from bike to bike?

  2. At first the steering felt very “twitchy” but by the end (and after coming down the steep and windy mountain) I would describe it as “responsive”. Made me wonder how/why I ever road the thing with aero bars in triathlon. The only way I could describe the difference is that the tri bike feels like a Cadillac El Dorado and the road bike a sports car. I suppose this is largely a function of wheelbase and front center differences. I felt more secure and confident taking tight turns on the road bike…now I remember why they make drop bars.

  3. Shimano’s STI brake levers sure are more comfortable on long descents vs tri bike aero levers! Those Dia Compe 188 brake levers really suck!

  4. Finally, since I used same training wheels, I was looking forward to comparing ride between the carbon fiber Kestrel and Ti QR. Frankly the difference was not really all that dramatic. Both feel good to me. The CF did seem quieter and more muted. Some may call that dead…I call it comfy. I guess all the commentary about fit being most important is really true.

I guess the bottom line is that each bike is great for its intended use. No secret there. For those of you with two bikes, do you find it beneficial to ride both during the year so your body remains adapted to both?

Mike

2

What about combining the best of both worlds?

http://www.applepics.com/4/userfiles/41460d7a4fd92.jpg

3

After many moons and a few failed attempts at buying and actually riding a road bike instead of my TT bikes, I got a Trek 5200. I’m selling my Softride SE7 but keeping my Zipp 2001 as my only TT bike. I’ll be riding the 5200 once or so per week just for the change. I do 20 repeats up and over the Vilano Bridge (its the closest thing to a hill we have in St Augustine, FL). I’ve been doing them on my TT bike but will switch that workout to my road bike starting as soon as it quits raining. I’ll also join the evening midweek training road race again.

4

Nice ride!

I however did mount the bars below the drop-bars and got the pads directly on top of the drop-bars. This gives me about the same position in the drops as on the clip-ons (upper-body wise).

You’re not ITU legal with this setup (clip-ons brake the plane of the front-levers). So don’t try to rack that ride at a points race :slight_smile:

5

Yes, I understand this is not an ITU rules draft legal bike–I don’t race those (although I have raced a draft-legal, non-USAT sanctioned race).

It is supposed to be a comfortable tri bike that one can ride fast on the flats, climb on, stand on (and still shift easily), descend on (fast), corner with on technical courses, and rapidly brake with, all with equal ease. Or so the theory goes (but so far it has worked well).