Bike Gear

I recently purchased some bike gear to add onto my bike. I've read various discussion concerning buying a triathlon specific bike or road bike. Seems like the consensus is to use the right tool for the job. Road bikes are better for hills and climbing while triathlon bikes are better for flatter and faster courses. So if you can swing it, have both. Well, that's not an option for me. I'm on a tight budget. I'll keep dreaming of the Trek Speed Concept & Felt B12. Until then, I've got to work with the road bike I've got.

Trek Speed Concept & Felt B12

My immediate need was a new saddle. I've never experienced this before until I put the bike on the trainer a couple of weeks ago. I've recently noticed that even short amounts of time on the bike are causing some numbness. Yeah, down there. Guys can relate to this and we need to take preventative measures if we ever want to have kids. So I purchased a tri specific saddle with hopes to eliminate any numbness. I'll follow up later when I've installed the new saddle.

The next upgrade are some aero bars. Once I get used to them, I'm expecting to gain some speed. These seem to be infinitely adjustable, so it's going to take me a while to dial them in. I'll also have to tweak my riding position to get the most benefit from sitting in an aero position while still maintaining a proper bike fit. Good thing I've got the bike on a trainer. I don't want to experiment on the road. At least not until I've  got things dialed in 99.9%.

I would recommend following @all3sports on Twitter. They're local in Atlanta but are a pretty big online retailer. They had an after Christmas sale with 20% off everything in stock including items already reduced. They tweeted the discount code on Twitter and I did not see it posted on their site. That code made a big difference on the aero bars as I got a 43% discount on them and 20% on the saddle. I'm not affiliated with All3Sports. I've purchased online and even been to the store and have had good service and experience. When I have a good experience, I like to share it and help support the local retailers.

Once I've installed the upgrades, I'll follow up with another post detailing the setup and adjustments I've had to make.