AlgarveCycling

Canyon have an Ultimate CF with Ultegra costing less than €3000 that weighs in at 7kg with rim brakes. Add aero wheels and it's a bargain Cat 2/3/4 racing bike.
It's more than light enough to really help in the climbs and with a bit of aero can be quite competitive for general bunch racing.

Spend a bit more and get the aero wheels included and disc brakes: https://www.canyon.com/en-pt/road-bi...nfarbe=RD%2FBK

Ultegra is widely used by the less wealthy Pro teams in the Continental category, a great groupset and Dura Ace is really only very marginally better.

Beng1 and others aren't entirely incorrect about some of the things they say, they just go wrong when they apply their personal abilities, needs, experiences upon others in their cost analysis assessments for rider vs how much to spend before their personal attributes don't necessarily justify the expense.

Aero is good for everything cycling. Lightweight is good for going uphill. Same Rider + bike = 80kg is going to cost more watts than Same Rider + bike = 78kg on a day of climbing. An obvious fact. A bike that is both aero and light is ideal for most types of riding but flat races will benefit from more aero at the cost of a little greater weight. Very steep races will benefit from lighter weight at the cost of less aero.
This is why WorldTour Pro's nowadays tend to have 3 bikes; aero, lightweight and TT.

Of course, it also depends upon the type of rider and their inherent strengths too - the terrain they are most likely able to take advantage of. The type of bike will also be dictated by this.

Manufacturers are trying to meld an ideal between aero and lightweight; see Specialized etc. but some are still sticking to getting maximum marginal gains and offering both extremes and the middle ground, see Trek, Cervelo etc.
Modern bikes in the last 5-10 years or so are more aero than older bikes despite some numpties trying to convince us otherwise; this has been proven time and time again. Similarly, daft mods to increase rider aero that don't actually work in real race conditions are equally stupid. Follow the science, not the nut job who thinks he had a eureka moment after a few too many beers.

Watts saved can mean a faster ride or an easier ride. Cycling today is a lot more scientific than it used to be with aerospace engineering, wind tunnel testing for every component and the rider, from rider nutrition, position, technique to the bike. It is the sum total of the whole at its most efficient that is the goal and we are better at it now than we have ever been.

The bike examples I mentioned above are all most of us need really for what we do but the super bikes will help anyone that little bit more depending upon what they want, terrain they ride upon etc - albeit to really maximise those extra gains for aero machines, you have to have the engine to do so since they are best realised the faster you go.

Still, engine or no, a superbike is a lovely thing and can be enjoyed the same way one would buy an expensive sports car that they will never fully use to its potential. A super light bike can be enjoyed without the big engine too, however, since it saves watts by weight alone and anyone who has ridden a sub-7kg bike will know this.

BlazingPedals

The TdF dumpsters are heavily-guarded, because the needles are a bio hazard.

Kapusta

Of all the changes in road bikes over the past 30 years, I think differences in aero and weight are among the least interesting or meaningful for the average rider.

Wider tires, STI shifters modern bar and shifter ergonomics, better brakes (both disc and rim), CF (ride quality) are IMO more impactful… at least to me they are.

timtak

Alas, the link does not seem to work for me.

The rider position seems to be rather relaxed, with an upward sloping top tube and long head tube and lots of air between the drops and the front wheel.

Makers can shave a fraction off the aerodynamic drag of the bike but as has been pointed out, rider position is the main determinant of the overall drag. A couple of degrees of rider chest angle probably wipes out all the advantages of fancy tubes, hidden brakes, strange headsets.

I agree if you mean aero frames. I think that rider position remains important, and your replica is, with its though slightly upwardly sloping, relatively aggressive position, probably as or more aero than the rockets you are imagining.

tomato coupe

No need for a photo -- it suffices to say it doesn't have a -45° stem with a ridiculous saddle-to-bar drop.

timtak

Aww. What type of Colnago are you riding?

My other bike has a pretty standard stem these days

Yellow Bike by Timothy Takemoto, on Flickr

Kapusta

What? There is nothing aero about my bike’s setup. I run my hoods level with my bars.

Any modern race bike can be set up as aero a riding position as people want. The reason you don’t see bikes set up like yours is because for most people that would be a terrible fit.

But if someone really wanted to they could do that same thing you did: go a few sizes smaller on the frame, use a high rise stem flipped upside down, and run the seat with a crazy amount of setback to make the frame fit.

timtak

As you say Kapusta.

Mark Cavendish uses a a frame a couple of sizes smaller than usually recommended and a long stem.

I "timtaked" my (supposedly aggressive 16cm head tube) bike with a 15cm -45 degree stem, and John Cobb (coach to Greg LeMond) uses negatively angled adjustable stems to make Specialized Tar Muck bikes aero.


That is the long and short of it really. Without these adjustments modern bikes are not aero because they are made for "most people" or for domestiques drafting their sprinter in a line of about eight people, in a pack of about eighty. If you ride like that, or are "most people" my ride, or most bikes from the tail end of the 20th century, would not suit at all.

I have decided to call my sofa-bars "future foam" in honour of the springs used elsewhere.

Yellow Bike by Timothy Takemoto, on Flickr
Smoother is faster
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000984482730.html

genejockey 

These bikes seem to be trying to ape the 'Funny Bikes' of the 80s, which had similar ridiculous saddle-to-bar drops. Actual work in wind tunnels demonstrated that ultra low is not actually more aerodynamic which is why you see most TT rigs these days have a lot higher stack, because the key turns out to be getting NARROW more than getting LOW.

I also love the description of the Canyon's DOWNWARD sloping top tube as UPWARD sloping.

tomato coupe

I don't have a Colnago.

HTupolev

Correct, but "most people" is indeed most people, which is why "most people" are dismissive of your geometry opinions. High-level racers who ride with super-low back angles are usually putting down enough torque relative to their body weight that they're pretty well-off in a level-forearms hood position when in the wind, and most other people just aren't physiologically suited to tolerating the hand contact points that you favor in a diamond-frame drop-bar context. So while I'm sympathetic to the idea that you might benefit from ultra-low hand contact points, I don't think this generalizes much at all.

And I say this as someone who is not, on the whole, highly favorable toward modern road ergonomics. While I concede that the ability to shift out of the saddle is a big deal in a competitive context, in other contexts I think I actually prefer late-pre-brifter cockpits.

timtak

Ha.

I could not get low when I started cycling. I found that as I cycled I got thinner, and purchased longer and lower stems. I call it the stem diet.

The Stem Diet by Timothy Takemoto, on Flickr

Then at last I could purchase a proper road bike with a horizontal top bar but then I found that the "funny bikes" weren't sold new anymore.

I do narrow too. I put a 38cm bar on the Trek (And I would have liked narrower or perhaps these
) and often use the tops, when I am not in my drops, now that I am glute centric because I need to push and pull on something. I think roadies should generally be cycling more like time trial bikes if they can get in that position, and are on their own, as almost all the cyclists I see are.

The John Cobb video that I often quote, quoted above, suggests that anyone that can get down low would be advised to do so. I don't think Robbie (I think) the guy in the video is a particularly high level racer, he is just not overweight.

Sy Reene

Yes, but what's crazy is to see so many riders out on expensive aero bikes, but they still haven't purchased the low cost hanging fruit

timtak

The innovations provided by so-called "aero" road bikes are similar to those provided by aero socks, but not only are they considerably more expensive, they are also accompanied by anti-aero (chest raising) modifications, like aero socks with parachutes.

That said, aero socks make sense to those with leg hair that they can't or don't want to shave and "aero" road bikes make sense to those who can't or don't want to get down low.

livedarklions

Aero position drills at the Kennedy Center:


Could you be more off-topic on the thread if you were trying?

timtak

As far as I am aware, the video by John Cobb explains how to obtain perhaps about ten times the aero dynamic advantage of the most aerodynamic frames by the use of one of these
About 20 dollars

By putting the rider in the position used by those riding late 20th century road bikes, for about 20 USD, demonstrating that past two decades of "innovation" is a bad bargain, or worse, complete cobblers.

HTupolev

Overweight has little to do with it. For most people, the bottleneck for angle between torso and legs is flexibility, not belly obstruction. In fact that's probably true for Robbie, since otherwise it doesn't make any sense for the fitting process to stop where it did; he easily could have gotten lower.

At any rate, Robbie is reasonably flexible, has long limbs, and is shown riding with arms outstretched on the hoods. Most people would have the bars set higher for a functionally-equivalent position. Many people also choose to set the bars a bit higher because, if arms-outstretched-hoods is the lowest comfortable posture, you're underutilizing the contact options available on a drop handlebar.

timtak

My guess is that weight has a lot to do with why bikes went from being very aerodynamic in terms of the rider bike combination in the late 20 century, to having very aero frames but tall headsets, and UN aerodynamic ride-bike combinations (unless a lowering stem is used) in the past two decades.

It seems unlikely that riders have become less flexible.

Weight is still on the rise.
https://time.com/5751551/us-obesity-by-state/

Perhaps "aero road bikes" will be sold with riser stems soon.(I think that they already are, but obfuscated as "Future Shock" for example)

HTupolev

For the vast majority of riders, I think this is a false premise. Even among slim and fit roadies, most choose fits that don't involve flipping and slamming the front-end fit to its limits. And if they're not doing that, if their fit isn't bottlenecked by that stack, then it's not obvious why a lower stack would motivate use of a lower bar position.

livedarklions

So you're just going to ignore the whole non-competitive part of the question? Going into really low tucks is for racing or racing-adjacent riding.

I understand you do this same schtick in thread after thread, but enough already. Aerodynamics at this extreme is so besides the point.

livedarklions

I don't think there's been an era when the vast majority of riders used drop bars, let alone a lower bar. This is a ridiculous aside and I think we should stop giving it oxygen.

GhostRider62

I watched your video.

Cobb sets a very low and flat back position on Robbie. Then, he calls it an all day position. He also says it takes weight off the hands and sit bones.

Just wanted to say also that I recently bought one of his saddles, and it was also worthless

WhyFi

Even pros aren't rocking ridiculous setups like yours. Lower != better; it's not a matter of "aero is everything," it's more like "speed is everything." Speed is going to rely on a balance between aero and power production. Power production will include muscle recruitment, oxygen intake, etc - this can suffer dramatically with extreme setups. Maybe this is an optimized position for you, in particular, but I have a strong hunch that you don't have enough data for even that conclusion.

livedarklions

And to top it off, then he puts it in the context of a half-baked dietary theory.

genejockey 

I prefer things fully baked. Otherwise the insides are often gooey.