Take the aero bars off a tri bike and you have a bike without the speed of a tri bike and without the handling of a road bike.
Road bike with aero bars vs tt bike.
As with everything there will be a balance between quality and price.
Both are slender road bikes with aero bars designed for performance.
Flexibility and strength will determine which bike you use as the relative fatigue of a tt bike is higher than a road bike.
Road bikes are more versatile than dedicated triathlon or time trial bikes and adding quick release aero bars lets you take full advantage of a single bike.
Tri tt frames generally make poor handling road bikes since they are optimized for a low forward position in the aero bars.
Ok so i put aero bars on my bike.
Follow me on strava and instagram.
You wouldn t want to accidentally mix the bikes up however as each is specially engineered to fit the task at hand.
To emulate the benefits those angles provide a pair of clip on aero bars is an inexpensive modification to achieve a lower more aerodynamic position.
As above an aero road bike will be faster than a traditional road bike on the flat but not as fast as a dedicated tt bike all other things such as wheels being equal.
Handlebars with aero tops are nothing new and many brands realised long ago that you could save a few watts buy optimising yet another leading edge on the bike but it s not the frame it s.
In collaboration with boardman bikes and anton sport sykkeldelisk i will test it out in the spring.
Clip on aero bars the key difference between a tt bike and a road bike is in the angles of the frame and components.
We will build up a boardman air road bike w clip on with identical measures as my current boardman tte tri bike.
I ve got 4 bikes currently and my argon 18 nitrogen is noticeably fast than my other bikes but my mate is in another league when on his shiv.
If you put a triathlon bike side by side with a time trial bike it would be hard to tell the difference.
In fact at first glance they look identical.
For many people it would be a better choice to use road bike with tt bars because there will be less fatigue on the body and it will deliver your body to a better shape.