To accompany my previous article titled “Why a road bike?”.

As I may have stated in my road bike article the road bike and the triathlon bike are two totally different animals. Road bikes have a geometry that is less steep than a triathlon bike and although they are not necessarily “slow” they aren’t designed for speed like a triathlon bike is.

A typical triathlon bike has a seat tube angle that is beyond 74 or 75 degrees which is contrary to a road bike with a 72 or 73 degrees and smaller sized road bikes with 74 sometimes 75 degrees. The reason for the steeper angle on a triathlon bike is to allow a more forward riding position that will recruit similar muscles as running as well as provide a slightly lower frontal area to penetrate the wind as low and as aero as possible. Now before I continue, no matter what you choose to ride, let me insist that a proper bike fit is critical for both road and triathlon bikes. Bike fit is very easy to mess up.

Now going back to the speed thing, like I said, triathlon bikes are built for speed and can be more difficult to ride your long steady training rides which are more suited to the ’slack’ geometry of a road bike. To put it simply, triathlon bikes are meant to be ridden hard and fast, and that is how they’ve been designed. That being said, here is where it gets complicated, if you are not fast, have no ambition to go fast or carrying a few extra pounds around the mid section, stick with a road bike and place some of the short aero bars on it. Reason being you probably won’t be using the tri position at all or very little and any benefit to having the steep, low tri position will be thrown out the window as you will probably be spending more time out of the aero bars than in them. But again, a good bike fit can help just about every problem. So if you absolutely need a cool, aero bike, get one, but realize it’s purpose.

So with a tri bike the goal is to be in the aero bars almost all of the time. They are meant for speed, designed for speed and handle much better at speed, and when fit properly can provide you the result you may be looking for. A fine balance in your training between a road and tri bike is critical, so if at all possible have both.

Written by Matt Simpson