I am planning to buy this bike for olympic races and 1 or 2 HIM/year. I can afford a tri bike but I don’t want to have 2 bikes. Does anybody here rides this bike for HIM? What about comfort in aero position for long rides?
If you only want one bike and you want one that will work as a road bike and a tri bike, then you couldn’t make a better choice.
We’ve changed out the seatpost in the Soloist Carbon with a carbon seatpost from a P2SL Pro to acheive a steeper seat tube angle. The Soloist Carbon is sold with a non-reversible fixed geometry post.
The positions and handling we’ve gotten on the Soloist Carbon seem fine right up to 79 degrees effective seat tube angle using a 30 cm long saddle such as the Fizik Arione or the Profile tri stryke.
One note: This bike does have a road bike’s front end geometry, so it may be a trifle responsive in the very steep (as I’ve descibed above) orientation.
The front center dimension on 56cm Cervelo Soloist Carbon is 59.3 centimeters whereas it is out to 62.6 centimeters on the same frame size (56 cm) Cervelo P2C. That difference in how far the front axle is from the bottom bracket is going to translate into a handling difference. If you are descending off the Col de Vence at Ironman France or through the Maritime Alps at Monaco 70.3 then you will want a tighter front end likely, but you’ll have to be a good bike handler. If you want a little more stable front end you may prefer a dedicated tri bike with a longer front end.
You will be fine. Simon even won IM LP on a Soloist (team). I’ve done 6 tris on a Soloist Carbon (forward switched post though) with clip ons with no handling issues, but I’m a good bike handler from road racing/roadie riding. If you ever find yourself getting “squirly” in some tight corners/traffic (rare in a tri), just go for the drops. Very comfortable aero since you can’t get as low on the front end as a dedicated tri bike (hence you will be trifle slower/less aero) - more of the classic IM “big slam” position for most.
I bought my CS for the exact same reason but would now prefer to have a dedicated tri bike, other than that I have no issues with bike handling with my hed aero bars, comfort is great, and I get fairly decent results.
i have a soloist (alu) and do that. it was fine for a 1/2 IM, as fine as for an oly. but it would have been nice to have bar end shifters.
Many people before you have done a HIM on a road bike with clip-ons and lived to tell the tale. Many more will continue to do so in the future. A pure tri bike is great, but if you want only one bike then the Soloist seems more aero than many other pure road bikes. Considering all of the other variables I don’t know how much the difference would be, but I can’t say that difference would be zero either. The few people I know that have a Soloist seem to like them and the people that I know that have different road bikes (like me) don’t seem to regret not having a Soloist.
Have you ridden the bike or looked at the geometry, or are you just looking at it because a lot of people say that it is a good ‘in-between’ bike for road and tri?
I used my soloist team for an IM, I’m using it for a few 1/2s as well.
I cannot speak for the Carbon Version, but I can for the Soloist Team.
I rode my Soloist team at Wildflower LONG COURSE this year due to cracking the frame on my Dual. It was a great ride, I went with a full tri setup Profile Aerobars w/ front end shifters. I used this bike for the majority of my LONG IMCDA prep as well in this setup.
It was VERY comfortable and very fast (It is the 210 engine that has issues).
When the time came to handle the warranty issue with Cervelo, I was very close to choosing a Soloist Carbon upgrade instead of the P2C.
I do not think you can go wrong!
Pete