Originally Posted by
Morelock
loaded question, and any answer other than "depends" is going to be speculation at best.
Some things I've seen working with folks... narrow as possible (elbows touching) usually is the right choice if you can't go low. Low and moderate elbow width (within your silhouette) works "pretty good" for most people with some tweaking. Wide (wide like Sarah Hammer or some team pursuiters) is iffy, and usually on the "not great" side of iffy. Some people do find it more stable at speed, which may be why TP and Kilo guys are often wider. (besides kilo specialists being bigger guys to start with) If you're going to try wide (hard to do nowadays with modern bars... best I've set up are the newer 3T offerings that you can set the clamps up narrow or wide - older stuff like the old HED/OVAL bars worked better) some things to test out are - keeping your arms/extensions in line all the way vs. coming to a "point/wedge" with your hands - how "wide" you actually are going (keep the silhouette of your arms within your thighs/hips from a head on view)
My over-arching guess is that for *most* people that can't/won't/don't test - buy a really cheap (round) basebar, some cheap clip-ons and an adjustable stem, jump on the trainer (with your aero helmet) and video yourself riding (after warming up) making power from a side on shot.
Find the video where your head "slots in" the best, then start refining from there. Another generalization is that if you feel like your power is being stifled, higher/narrow is usually better than lower/wider. If you're really bad at staying on the black line, it's possible that wider will help stabilize you. (also could help with TP riding)
*Going longer (more reach) is also usually a good way to drop drag... under the 75(80)cm rule though, it often means running a lot of saddle setback.
I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and do some instrumented testing at some point next year, because despite my question, I'm thinking (based on learnings before, and reminded while reading your post) that the answer for this is subjective, and there are many factors which apply perhaps differently depending on the person.
For example, I've done my own rudimentary testing with power, speed, cadence and HR to see how my cockpit changes affected things, and I "think" I've done a decent job of creating a balanced solution that is efficient, seems to be fast on my road TT bike, and
feels good enough to be sustainable...BUT, some folks do this for a living, and I could be off by a healthy margin. While I enjoy doing these things myself, I may have fakked it up nicely.
