Originally Posted by
vespasianus
I have been looking a lot at the Iron Man Kona as that is a race that has had the same basic bike route (with some exceptions) over 40 years. Bikes of course have evolved significantly and a full aero Tri-bike - as raced by the vast majority of the top 10 finishers are vastly more aero and more advanced than any "road" bike, even a specialized ICI TT bike.
Times over that period have increased at the MOST by 5.1 seconds per mile. And again, we are comparing the old fashioned skinny tubed steel bike - which they started with - to the most modern AERO bike you can make now. Surprisingly, the whole race times are not that much different either - so it has not lead people to be "fresher" and able to "run" faster - at least not by a lot!
I would argue and firmly believe that for most everyone riding, all the changes on road bikes over the last 20 years have had a modest impact upon speed at best. Just ride what you like and be happy.
If you want to spend 15K on a bike, do it and be happy. If you don't, you can get a bike just as good, for much less and be just as fast and I would argue, just as happy!
I have some insight in this and agree with you. I've never done Kona but I did 2 other Ironmans as well as maybe 100 other tri's in late 90's through early 2000's.
I had a very aero bike for the time. A Felt B2 with Hed 3 spoke wheels front and back. One piece Vision bars. 650c baby. The bike was fast, it also wasn't that heavy, maybe 19lbs. I raced on that bike for a while until I decided to get more into road racing instead.
There was a 1/2IM I entered to impress a girl 2 years after I was done with tri's. The only training I'd done was racing Cat 3 in Colorado for a season. At that point the only bike I had was traditional road bike. It had round aluminum tubes, nothing aero about it. I put clip on aero bars on and borrowed an almost antique disc wheel from a friend. Once I doggypaddled out of the lake, I clocked one of the fastest bike times of the day and certainly the best of my life.
I got the big picture aero things, the itty bitty details only matter for shaving seconds, not making a giant difference. Look at the wind tunnel tests. Body position, Disc wheel, shaved legs, and snug clothing. The rest is really splitting hairs for pro's or mostly marketing for amateurs. A 2 minute difference to the average "finisher" over a 6+ hour ride simply doesn't matter. The middle aged orthopedic surgeon training for an Ironman is quite happy to buy that bike, so why not?
I would definitely caution against using triathletes as a measure of anything. They are an incredibly inconsistent group. You've got swimmers, or runners, with every intention of making up their bike time on the other events. You've got windbreakers flapping in the breeze. You've got people ****ting in the woods because they don't race enough to have a "race day belly" plan. You've got broken bikes. Borrowed bikes. No maintenance bikes. It's just such a wild group that I'd be hesitant to make any conclusions about them.