Does anyone ride a different bike When the race they are doing Has a lot of elevation gain. I am speaking in terms of triathlon only.
I have a 70.3 with lots of climbing coming up. I’m going to use a road bike.
To be fair it’s not just down to the elevation. It’s also because I’m not travelling with my bike this time. I’ll hire one there, and a road bike is WAY easier to set up for myself in a single test ride than a tri bike. But also, there’s a long steep climb involved which I suspect would mitigate most of the advantage that a tri bike would gain elsewhere. I do intend to fit some basic clip-ons however in case there’s headwind on the downhill!
I’ve done races with a 2000 foot climb and I’m happy I choose my tri bike.
jaretj
I’ve never ridden a tri bike course that would have been faster on a road bike, no matter the elevation gain… and I almost exclusively race events with lots of gain. About the closest I think I’ve came is Escape from Alactraz, mostly because due to the course design and congestion it simply felt safer on a road bike even though I know it wasn’t actually faster.
In terms of simply using a lighter or different tri bike, I’ve never done that since I’ve never owned more than 1 tri bike at a time but I know people who have in a few specific scenarios. One example was a dude who rode his older tri bike with mechanical shifting instead of his new (at the time) P5 with Di2 at the inaugural IMLT because he could put a mid cage derailleur and run a 32T cassette on the mech setup but stuck with short cage for the Di2.
The answer is that unless the course is Swissman or the Alpe D’Huez Tri the answer is take the Tri bike and if you have it, the take a disc wheel.
Anything other than a course that is up/down almost exclusively - take the Tri bike.