Mine is 220 mm.
My arm pads touch each other 
.
135mm
.
My arm pads touch each other
What the hell.
154mm. For what it’s worth that’s as narrow as I can get and still have a bottle between my arms.
Am I to wide?
Am I to wide?
Maybe ¯_(ツ)_/¯ post a picture of your fit and front end setup.
I’m a TTer only Damien. Plus I’m double jointed so that helps. I had to drill and tap new holes in the arm that the pad holders mount to., stock wasn’t narrow enough. Plus I cut off the excess, probably saved .3 watts 
I thought that John Cobb has posted something about narrow hand position, but the pad width does not need to be too narrow…air still has to flow around your hips at some point unless you magically make your hips as narrow as the pad width. I guess the question is what happens to the airflow after it passes the pads but before it hits the hips and which option results in less drag/better laminar airflow…maybe one visualization is less “back window shudder” if you consider the “window” between upper arm and hips to be an opening that the air can slam down around you and inside and hit your body or if you manage to deflect most of it out to the side. Seems like the general consensus though from most wind tunnel sessions is “narrow is better”. But intuitively it does not totally make sense to me.
Having my arm pads narrow forces me to roll my shoulders in, so for me it’s faster. Everyone is different though.
Having my arm pads narrow forces me to roll my shoulders in, so for me it’s faster. Everyone is different though.
I can see that. For my morphology, a too narrow pad position pushes my shoulder blades together and pushes my neck up. I can’t get my head in between the shoulders once the pad width gets too tight.
I don’t know how aero this really is, but Natasha Badmann uses a wide pad low head, moderate hand width position:
Maybe because of the bike 
remember she has no bull horns on that bike.
That ‘looks’ terrible and seems like the worst of many worlds. I was at pad touching stage but putting them slightly wider allowed my scapulae to stay wider and let me hang my head in lower. I never tested conclusively if this was faster. It ‘looks’ a lot better and it is a heck of a lot more comfortable. My entire front end is set passively now just by locking in the elbows and holding the shifters.
Try shrugging your shoulders as you protract. If your cockpit is set up correctly it should hold the shrug for you.