Steep vs slacker fatigue

Triathlon Forum
1

I am deeply entrenched in the bike purchase juggernaut. I am training for imlp and only want to own one bike.

As I see it the main conclusion around the steep vs slack (Why so Few Sevens…) is handling.

See that I am solo training specific to triathlon, one would conclude that a tri bike is my answer. I.e Guru Tri-ti here in lies my issue with a 4+ thousand for a 20 lbs bike. (four lbs defecit to carbon is alot of aero) If you Want lightweight buy carbon I.E Crono- issue is I am not willing to afford it.

That all being said I am now looking at a road bike in carbon I am willing to afford with shorty bars. I.E trc carbon, orbea onix.

finally to my question are there fatigue related issues with being slack?

Am I correct in saying that if I can “solve” the handling issues with proper bars and set up then it is 6 to one 1/2 dozen to the other.

2

The thing with road bikes is you will never get as low on your bars as you can with a tt bike. Without having ridden one, the cervelo dual might be a good choice because you can ride steepish and shallow and not sacrifice handling. Try one out in the flesh and it might take a bit of fiddling but try it in both steep and slack configs. I think there are fatigue issuses with slack riding. I just went from 73-74 to 80 and after adapting to a few tweaks from muscles not used prior, I am recovering from my 180km race sims very nicely compared to the same distance on my roadie. It just seems like the muscles aren’t contracting as hard on each stroke for the same (actually increased) speed. This is of course subjective, but it seems to fly with the theories.