Aero Bars for a flat bar roadie

[WebHead]

Hi All,

I have been riding a "WebHead Custom" flat bar road bike i built out of a GT Agressor frame for over a year or so now. Has slicks and road gearing and goes quite well. I have added some bar ends on either side of the stem to get a more aero riding style and find it works quite well and gives me somewhere different to put my hands when they go numb. However lately i have been looking at buying a new bike and have seen the Tri bikes with the aero bars. Now has anyone ever fitted these to a flat bar road bike to get a lower position. I think in theory leaning on you fore arms would give a really comfrotable ride and it puts me a little more forward than just having bars ends. Any thoughts?

Cheers
WebHead.

[mikesbytes]

Hi WebHead, welcome to the forum.

The majority of wind is actually against the torso, if you are looking for better aerodynamics, you are better off to get your body lower, so it has less frontal. This is the main reason that racers and tri bikes are quicker than flat bar road bikes. Tri bikes give slightly better aerodynamics off the body than traditional racers and sacrifice a bit of manuverabilty to gain this bit of aerodynamics over the racer.

What the aero bars do is bring the arms in alignment with the body, effectively reducing the amount of wind drag by something approaching the wind that would of hit your arms.

So my first recommendation would be to see if you can lower your handle bars, so to reduce the wind drag on the torso.

Burn plenty of Glycogen
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