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@ewanmac
Right, when it comes to cycling, I’m mainly a triathlete – I race TTs but to be honest it’s really just as a hard training session. My current bike stable includes my TT bike (which I use exclusively for racing) and a road bike, which I do most of my training on. At the moment my road bike is set up in a conventional road position (with a set of tribars) so that I could use it comfortably on group rides, but the reality is that I seem to be doing all my training alone at the moment. I’ve therefore been considering whether I should set my road bike up to replicate my TT position. I know lots of triathletes do this but I’m not sure whether it is a good idea or not.
The way I’d do it is to set it up keeping as many parts as possible, that means it would just be a road bike (with Tri bars), just with a very aggressive position.
My first question is what are the pros and cons of this and is it worth it? On the positive side it strikes me as a good thing to train in the position I will race in. I know that getting my back/shoulders acclimatised to spending long hours in my race position is a good thing, but I’m not sure whether or not training in a TT position is significantly better than training in a road position (I guess it can’t do any harm). On the negative side I guess that the handling might be really weird with a TT position on a road bike.
Secondly, assuming it is worth it, how do I go about it? What are the main components of bike fit that I need to consider? BB-saddle height, BB-saddle set back [UCI rules not relevant], Saddle-Aero pads reach, saddle-aero pad drop… have I missed any?
I have had a quick explore and I think that in order to do this I will need a new seat-post (currently when I reverse my seat-post I can’t get the saddle flat – do reverse seat-posts exist?) and a longer stem (to accommodate moving the saddle forwards). Also my road frame is a size larger than my TT frame so I think I’m going to need a negative angle stem (or an upside down one) in order to get low enough.
SOrry for the long post - any thoughts/advice appreciated.