Triathlon - What kind of bike do you train on? Road or TT/Tri?

I'm interesting in what bikes everyone rides day to day. I have both types and while I enjoy the TT bike, its a more uncomfortable riding position after an hour or two and so am mixing it up more between the two bikes. I want to improve my ability on the TT bike by spending time in the saddle but have decided that I still need to ride both bikes regularly. Curious about how others might approach this.

thoughts, anyone?

It depends on the time of the year and the riding I'm doing. When I lived in a very flat area I rode my triathlon bike 80% of the time, now that I'm living in a hillier area and it's the off season I'm probably more around 50/50.

I think the workouts you're doing are more important than the bike you're riding while you're doing them.

I ride my tri bike the large majority of the time. I ride my road bike for group rides (and I don't do many of those). I ride my fixed gear to the store or for short, easy rides. I suspect that your tri bike will get more comfortable on longer rides the more long rides you do on it. I can easily ride 100+ miles on my tri bike without being uncomfortable.

Thanks, appreciate the comments. I'm hoping the TT bike (Cervelo P3SL) will get more comfortable with more riding. Love the way it feels, just not used to being so forward on the bike. Agree that its not about the bike ( where have I heard that before??....) but am just curious what other people do. I see lots of road bikes on the road, not many TTs.

It all depends on the type of ride and mood I am in. If I am going to push hard it's my Tri bike, for a longer slower ride my touring bike, for the very rare group ride road bike and for commuting I switch between my single speed and touring bike. I believe each one has something to offer for training purposes.

I commute on either my mountain bike (wet/snowy/icy weather) or my road bike (dry weather). As a result, most of my miles get put on one of those. During tri season I'll try to get in at least one long ride every weekend on my tri bike. On the off-season, I'll ride it on the rollers occasionally but don't have a regularly scheduled ride on it.

I only ride my TT bike prior to a race to make sure it is all running okay and then at the race... I don't find the need personally to ride the TT bike otherwise as I have no problems adapting to it. Especially now that I am at the moment just racing ITT's which were pretty frequent over Winter. These require the saddle nose to be 5cm behind the BB for the UCI regulations and this is very close to my road bikes saddle setback.

Training - Road bike for main sessions / intervals as it has the SRM - I train solo so I can focus on my sessions. Commuting either on my 'winter bike' or fixed gear conversion which are both road orientated set ups.

To improve your performance on your TT bike, just ride more, and do specific workouts tailored to the distances your are targeting.

Ride whatever you feel like riding that day. Just ride the heck out of it, and have fun. I will ofter ride my budget tri machine:

http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj158/simon_milan/bikes010.jpg

or my steel racer, with non-clip pedals:

http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj158/simon_milan/008.jpg

and have a brilliant time on both.

Nice old-school Peugeot. Looks a bit like my Columbus SL framed oldie - except you've got much nicer kit on yours. Perhaps I should upgrade my old bike a little more.

To take the topic a step futher ( & apologies if this is in another thread) but, what do you guys include in your workouts if you are focusing on sprint distance races? Any details around this would be appreciated.

Thanks for the compliments. Your SL frame tubing ´trumps´my Columbus Gara! The Peugeot is a fun ride, and the upgrades/changes all work really well.

Here are some time trial training resources:


http://www.altovelo.org/training/timetrials.php

http://www.racelistings.com/...rticle.asp?recid=296 (http://www.racelistings.com/rzone/articles/article.asp?recid=296)


http://www.timetrialtraining.co.uk/

http://cyclinginfo.co.uk/...-10-mile-time-trial/ (http://cyclinginfo.co.uk/blog/timetrials/training-for-a-10-mile-time-trial/)

http://www.sportsci.org/jour/05/amt-m.htm

http://www.ehow.com/...etitive-cycling.html (http://www.ehow.com/video_2366045_training-time-trials-competitive-cycling.html)

Should get you started. Best of luck.

I only ride my TT bike around the block to make sure eveyrhtings working fine or sometimes if I train with my friend and we take the truck to bring our bikes to the path. Otherwise 95% of the time I'm on my road bike as there just WAY too much traffic to be riding a tri bike on the streets here unless I wanna become road pizza. I use my mountain bike too but just short trips like to the pool or to the park to run.

I don't profess to be a bike expert, however I've been lucky enough to train with someone a lot who I believe to be and pick his brain a few times about his training.

In general he doesn't ride a lot.

Usually he does some combination of the following:

10 - 30 x 30-90 second intervals really hard with equal rest. A lot of times he does these on the trainer because it can be hard to find a route which doesn't interfere with the on/off.
4 - 6 x 3-7 minute intervals hard with 2-5 minutes rest. (A fun way to do this workout with someone else is to do alternating pulls, one goes 4 minutes, then the other)
2 - 3 x 20-30 minute intervals pretty hard with a good 5 - 10 minutes rest depending.

If he rides long it's either really long(5 hours), or a good up tempo 2-3 hours.

Now that may seem like a lot of different stuff but in general I try and get 2 of the 3 interval workouts in per week and alternate between a long easy ride and harder shorter long ride each week. Take a couple other days to ride easy.

It all depends on where I am in the season, what type of riding I will be doing, what type of terrain I will be riding in, the goal the work out etc. etc.

I try to get in at least two rides each week on my tri bike; usually intervals or some hard solo rides; mostly on flat to rolling terrain. If I have a big race coming up, I increase the amount of time I spend on the tri bike for the 2-3 weeks prior to the race.

If I'm heading out for a group ride, I always use a road bike. The group rule is that tri bikes are ok, but you can't ride in the aero position unless you are pulling, and only then if the terrain and traffic dictates it (basically, flat terrain and no traffic, so when we're out on the back roads...). It would really limit my use, so I stick of my road bike.

If I'm doing a nice long ride with my wife, we both use our road bikes. Just more enjoyable riding and talking (yes, I do talk when I ride... not every ride needs to be at race pace).

If I have a road race coming up, I will use my road bike even for interval training.

The benefit I have is that I have both bikes set up the same (saddle height, position in relation to BB, drop, but obviously not handlebar position...). This makes is very easy to go from one bike to another.

Thanks everyone, appreciate the advice. Its similar to my own thinking but I appreciate knowing what others are doing .

mahalo.

combination of the fixed gear and tt bike.
i do distances on my fixed gear when I can.

wow, thread killer

I ride my cannondale in the winter and one of my zipp's all other times.

I have a old school C-dale CAD 3 a size too small for my Tri bike...all 105 with Rolphs.....Not a bad bike. I train on a Bianci 928 Carbon all 105.

I ride my cannondale in the winter and one of my zipp's all other times.

You wheels cost more than my entire triathlon setup, including the $$$ Cervelo!

Don't sweat it, a good pause just adds tension.