I guess I did it the “approved” way, though mostly by accident. Borrowed an ancient standard road bike, to train for and do a late season sprint tri. Fun. Bought a road bike the following winter. Did a couple of olys on it without modification, then slapped some clip-on aero bars on it for the next couple of years. Just recently bought a tribike. I’m keeping the road bike though and will ride it quite a bit, esp. on a weekly roadie group ride that I hit most weeks during good weather.
Question: Can anyone think of any reason to leave the aerobars on the road bike?
FWIW, the roadies have never struck me as particularly arrogant. It probably helps that my wife rides with them more than I do, I don’t think it’s a particularly hard core group (not many real “racers”) and I’m pretty oblivious to that kind of thing anyway (in other words, even if they were looking down their noses at me, I probably wouldn’t realize it).
I’d just take them off. I like having a dedicated "roadie approved "road bike. You can always put them back on if for some reason you need to.
i’d take them off if for no other reason than it opens up more hand positions on the handlebars, especially when climbing and that kind of thing.
25% of our roadie group are also triathletes and most also have aero bars on their road bikes. However, we have rules that you may only go down on the bars 1) when pulling at the front 2) if you’ve been dropped and are trying to catch up. Any other time is taboo. None of the pure roadies have a problem with this.
I’d check with the roadie group and see how they feel.
I recently went on my first ride with some “roadies” … guys that enter cycling/triathlon races anyway. They don’t ride tri-bikes.
I show up in sweat pants (I normally wear cycling/running tights/pants … but they were in the washer), running shoes , sweatshirt, gloves, helmet, and shades. I stroll up on an old Raleigh Technium w/ aero bars clipped on, a Bell gel seat, and my bike computer hooked up to the rear wheel (from trainer work) and gatorade in the bottle holder.
They are in full cycle gear, straight from the pro shop, on nice road bikes (no aero, obviously), and their own pre-mixed dual bottles.
Now, I read all this stuff and I fit the “dumb newbie” perfectly. I guess it could have been better … I could have worn shorts to show off my hairy legs. somewhere, on some website, or in some office … I am the butt of some likely really funny jokes. It must be true … what goes around …