Originally Posted by
rbart4506
My wife and I did our first TT's last week...Actually our first races of any kind, it was a club TT...We both had fun and she actually won, beat the rest of the women by close to 2 minutes. We're both just using our road bikes for now, but I know she's dreaming of a TT bike.
For now I'm thinking aerobars and see how that goes. With aerobars do you just slap them on or is better to adjust saddle position to get you a bit more forward?? I'm thinking if that's the case I might get her a straight seat post (she has a setback) with a second saddle and just swap that out with the aerobars for when she's doing a TT.
Thanks guys...
The TT position is a bit different than standard road position as is the geometry of a TT bike versus a road bike. The riders I know personally who simply slap on a pair of aerobars to do time trials, simply put the aerobars on, and leave everything as is. The two biggest bang for the buck items for doing an efficient time trial is a set of aerobars and an aero helmet. For a fascinating look at the difference various things make. See the exellent paper on the subject on the Specialized website. Go to the Specialized Transition, and click the tab on other information. You will find that very interesting paper which matches their top of the line road bike with a Specialized Transition. The object is always wattage savings. Each improvement you make in decreasing your aero dynamic drag saves you additional watts to maintain the same speed - hence if you put out the same watts as before, you go faster. Going faster is the name of the game.