In large part, that’s your answer right there. If you’re not going to buy a TT bike right now, don’t worry about it. You will be fine, and having a TT bike won’t change whether you enjoy an Ironman, whether you have the fitness to do one well, etc. If you want your absolute best time regardless of expense then a road bike ain’t it, but a road bike with clipons is closer to a TT bike (the body position is a huge component of your total drag) than it is to a road bike without them.
And yeah, fitness counts for a lot. @Mikael_Eriksson won his AG at the Portugal 70.3 on a road bike with clip ons last year as a I recall.
Right so an 80mm stem is on order just to regain a bit of handling and increase elbow angle a little further. I feel that with the seat raised a little this is as close as I’ll get. It feels pretty comfortable on the road
I recently listened to Mikael Eriksson’s podcast which covered this and he spoke about winning is 70.3 age group on a road bike which gives me confidence that it will be good enough for this year…
Again thanks for the input guys
I sold off my Tri bike 3 years ago to simplify things. I had been riding a tri bike exclusively going back to 1996. I realized I enjoy a road bike more most of the time.
I have a Cervelo S1. I have a seat mounted to a 2nd forward seat post and clip on bars. At the end of last season I switch the bike around about 6 weeks out from my race to get used to the fit. I completed the build and part of the specialty phase on TR in the aero position in prep.
Race day pacing went well. I had a PR on the bike split and in the race. It was the first time I have ever gotten to the end of the bike portion and thought, “that’s it?”.
So for me, it works. 5 min to swap parts and I’m happy with the speed increase. My on road testing shows about 1.5mph speed gain for the same power output. I can live with that.
One other point, I don’t notice any issue with the bike handling concerns that others talk about.
For those of you lucky enough to own a road bike & a TT bike - what kind of time savings have you experienced when switching to a TT bike over 10 or 25 mile TT’s?
My current setup is a road bike with clip-on aero bars. It’d be a big investment for me to buy a TT bike, so I’m curious on what time savings I could potentially achieve. I’ve read a few articles that quote potential watt savings etc., but I’m after real-life examples of the amount of time people have trimmed off their TT’s when switching to a TT bike.
I recently rode an early season 10TT on a road bike one week and on a TT bike two weeks later. The difference was exactly 3 minutes. Weather conditions were a bit warmer for the TT bike attempt but otherwise similar.
On this rolling 10 mile course I went from 27:30 to 24:28.
The road bike was a standard carbon non-aero, no aero bars, with shallow (30mm) rims, normal helmet and clothing.
The TT bike was a Giant Trinity with 50mm front and disc cover rear, aero helmet but no skinsuit or shoe covers, and no shaved legs! I should do sub 24:00 on that course with those extra aero aids.
So for my n=1, a TT bike might be worth 3 to 3.5 minutes saved over 10 miles, including aero clothing gains.
Me too, I was quite shocked! I have no power meter but HR and RPE was very similar in each case. My road bike has a slammed stem and an agressive position but it’s not in any way an aero bike and neither are the wheels.
I can only compare my RR and competitor’s TT bike on the same 21km course (all times relative to mine).
But, as you will see…there’s way more to it than that.
285w on RR w/ clip-ons = me.
285w with deep dish wheels and aero helmet = 2:20min faster.
300w with semi-aero everything = 2:56min slower.
330w with TT bike, full aero, disk wheel, etc = 11s faster.
340w on a RR with no aero anything except skinsuit = 1:11min faster.
It’s all over the shop. Don’t think just because you have the gear that you’ll instantly be blazing fast.
The 330w dude with total aero got smashed by a 340w guy on a standard road bike and only beat me by 11 seconds…putting out 55w LESS!
Watts alone will not paint the full picture. One may be able to say that the 330w dude went faster on that set up than if he were to do the same race on a RR however it is much more difficult to draw conclusions between different riders and equipment just looking at wattage output.
I did IM Wales a few years ago and a half IM a few months before. IM wales on a TT. Half IM with clip ons (& mechanical gears).
IM Wales involves too many gradient changes so you need to change gears. The most annoying thing I found with clip-ons was when you needed to change gear you have to leave aero position. For a flat Ironman course I doubt it matters much because you don’t need to change gears.
I had mechanical. If you have electric gears can you add extra controls to the aerobars? Or at least buy some cheap bar end shifters and re-wire it. I would not want to have done IM wales using clipons. In particular you can be whizzing down into saudersfoot and want to maintain speed for the hill on the other side, but you need to change gear a lot. You probably still do that hill twice & you have to be able to run a marathon after - last thing you want is to be grinding up it.
Good point eerke! I do have di2 gearing and have been planning to add bar end shifters so you have just helped me justify the expense damn this is an expensive lifestyle choice
Wow. I have to wonder a) how flat was the course, and how did those Ws translate into W/kgs? …and b), I wonder how much of that could be explained by different tires and tire pressure.
The course was kind of u-shaped/bowl shaped with a 1-min power climb in the middle. The heavier riders maybe took a bit longer to get up but definitely made up the time on the descent.
Maybe some? It wasn’t that long of a race where that would have been a significant factor.
Bike handling could have played a part too…there were some super fast tricky corners that would have slowed people down a lot if they weren’t in kamikaze mode. This would have effective power end readings as those people would have had to ramp it significantly to get back up to speed.
Maybe we’re all just slippery in our own unique way.
yep — I’ve done it with a mechanical setup. So it’d be a dream to do with Di2, albeit could get a little pricey (!), and the fit may have more possibilities, depending on your current setup. Bar end shifters are a great place to start though, to keep you out of the wind for as long as possible.
Ok cool, I’ll look into it. I guess the disadvantage is group riding and sportives. But then that’s where one bike can’t do it all thanks for the pointer
damn this is an expensive lifestyle choice 
