Originally Posted by
timtak
Not an experiment exactly. I would like there to be a pro model for the solo amateur rider. I would not have to be any difference in length to current time trials. 44km would be fine. I ride my bike for generally less than 50km and I guess that a lot of other amateur riders do also. Would the pros use lots of saddle to bar drop or go back to old school low, rear offset and forward thrusting legs? Would they ride on the drops, in the hooks, or resting on the tops? In any event, if their were a pro road-bike time trial then it would be a lesson in road bike set up and form for hard riding solo amateurs.
If your position is as comfortable as you say and as advantageous as you say, the pros would have adopted it. They haven't.
The design of their bikes and their position on them is already optimized and tested with wind tunnels and power meters. Clearly, if sitting way back and bending like a jackknife, with their hands down around the fork crown - like the old "funny bikes' of the 1980s - were more efficient, they'd be doing that. They WERE doing that, and they stopped, because your position is not, in fact, optimal for a EITHER a TT bike or a road bike. TT bikes do not replicate your position - the saddle is farther forward to open up the hips and allow the rider to apply power to the pedals. The hands and arms are not down around the top of the fork, but rather are up and forward. Indeed, the stack has gotten HIGHER as speeds have gone up.
So, your bike doesn't try to adapt TT bike thinking to a road bike but rather actually takes all the lessons learned in the last 30 years with actual empirical testing and throws them out the window. Again, if there were anything to your arguments, empirical testing would have shown it. It hasn't, so there isn't.