Tri bikes are great for getting into an aero position - but a dearth of choices can leave you frustrated.
We mountain bikers are pretty lucky: We have a plethora of choices when it’s time to buy a bike. Hardtail? Full suspension? Soft tail? Twenty-sixer, 29er, or even 69er? Singlespeed? Steel, carbon fiber, aluminum, titanium? Downhill, cross-country, all-mountain, dual slalom? So many choices – it can almost paralyze you.
Roadies also have a lot of choices. You can have Trek pop one of its ubiquitous but solid clonemobiles out of a carbon-fiber mold. Or you can scrounge up some old welder from Lithuania who used to work on MiG-21 fighters, and he’ll set you up with a fillet-brazed creation hung with old Campagnolo Record. And the United States is just silly with bearded recluses who can do awesome stuff with titanium.
But let’s heap pitty upon the poor triathlon geek. They have lots of choices, too – or should I say they have two choices? Aluminum or carbon fiber. For some reason, the triathlon industrial complex has settled upon these two materials are the savior, and I just don’t get it. The way the marketing heads and true believers position it, it goes like this:
1. They’re light.
2. They’re stiff.
3. They can be bent into all sorts of aerodynamic shapes.
Okay, fine. Let’s address this all point by point.
1. How light are they really? Steel and titanium have hardly rested on their laurels. The advent of air-hardened steel has brought the weights down significantly. And here’s the real truth about triathlon bikes: By the time they roll to the starting line, they are festooned with so many bento boxes, water cages, aero bars and various other devices that their weights have ballooned to Roseanne-eque proportions. The difference in frame weight between a modern steel frame and a carbon frame is probably a pound. That’s minuscule when you factor in the accessories. Better to knock some weight off your wheels, instead, which I also bring up in #3.
2. How stiff does a bike need to be? If my wife wasn’t a triathlete, I probably wouldn’t be thinking about this. But a small rider like her would benefit from a smooth-riding steel frame rather than a harsh carbon frame. To all those out there who are waving their hands saying carbon isn’t harsh anymore, I say bullshit. Ride a Trek Madone and then through a leg over an Independent Fabrications Crown Jewel, or even my 10-year-old Lemond Zurich*. Feel the difference? Imagine how that adds up over 100 miles and lots of rough pavement. And smaller riders feel the bumps more because of the smaller triangle of their frames – that’s just physics. *I had some guy on a Madone roll up to me on a ride last spring and give me The Lance Eye. My “heavy, antiquated” steel frame and I ripped him to shreds in a series of climbs. He was too far back for me to turn around and say “how do you like them apples?”.
3. Does anyone race in a wind tunnel? Or do you race in the real world? The winds come from the side. The front. The back. the diagonal. In other words, there are times when your aero frame will help, hurt or not make a difference. Really, you are the biggest aerodynamic factor. Dial in your position and stay fit. That makes a bigger difference than a “curvolinear hydroformed seat mast”. Or being 15 pounds overweight and wearing an aero helmet. And your wheels! Wheels can give you some aeroadvantage. And you can use them with any frame! Here’s something else about those sculpted aero frames: They make it hard to test-ride a bike. Short seattubes and all sorts of other weirdness create many dilemnas, and only give a bare glimpse into proper fit. So there’s a lot of guesswork that doesn’t exist with mountain and road frames.
If you’ll allow my inner cynic to run wild a bit longer, I’m going to delve into the carbon/aluminum disadvantages and why they get ignored.
1. They look cool. Carbon and aluminum bikes look like spaceships. Think that doesn’t make a difference? Eight years selling and fixing bikes in shops tells me differently. I date back to the time when you could walk into any shop and buy a quality steel bike. I can’t tell you how many times people chose aluminum because it looked cool. And when the thermoplatics GT STS came out? It was a droolfest. People, even experienced riders, often got seduced by looks and marketing stooges telling them what to like. And seriously – go to a high-end shop today. Watch how many people will ignore an exquisitely crafted, TIG-welded hardtail singlespeed and slobber all over a carbon bike that’s half the price.
2. They’re getting cheaper to make, so the bike companies push them. Carbon frame production is expensive to set up. But once you have that, their creation is largely automated. That means you ditch an expensive portion of the framebuilding process: People. Pop the frame out of the mold, smooth the flashing, add the decals and hang some parts on them. And you know what? You can bet that a lot of the carbon frames are coming out of the same mold and just getting different decals. It worked for steel and aluminum, and I’m certain it’s working just as well for carbon. Especially if you factor in fewer people to pay.
3. Internal cable routing is a huge problem with carbon tri bikes. More cable housing equals more friction. And the low-tech shifters tri bikes use (unlike the awesome STI-equipped road bikes) make a bad problem even worse. Consequently, tri bikes shift like early 1990s big box-store specials – my wife’s Kuota K-Factor shifts like a bike a quarter of its price. And hers isn’t alone. Ask any roadie turned tri geek who is smart enough to know the difference. Shifting performance on tri bikes sucks. The combination of dodgy friction shifters and internal routing equals crappy shifts.
4. It takes a high level of skill to weld a good steel frame. Titanium requires just as much skill – and the raw material is more expensive and more abusive on tools. Yes, you can find steel and ti tri bikes, but the prices are way higher than the carbon and aluminum bikes.
