I prefer 44's. I have broad shoulders and the wider bars just feel better

I am 5'9" I guess I am short too. :lol:
For sprinting, is it a big hinderance, or just something that needs to be adjusted to?

I'm somewhat wide shouldered for my height. I prefer a 39-41 cm bar. Narrower bars, to me, feel faster because it's quicker to rock the bike side to side when out of the saddle. I haven't tried a 38 cm so I don't know about them but for sure I dislike sprinting on 42-43-44-45, which are the bar widths I've tried in the past. I'm realistically a 42 cm bar in terms of "correct fit".

i went from 44cm bars to bars which are 37-42cm in the hoods-drops, respectively. i've got wide shoulders from my years as a competitive swimmer, but i like the smaller bars. i'm not a sprinter so i dont really know now how much it matters, but when i ride bikes with 44cm bars now it feels like im driving a truck

yea, I wonder how much the arm action is actually involved in the sprint.

btw. carpediem, your saddle is very far forward, right? doesn't that put a lot of weight on your shoulders?

While the sprinting with wider bars seems better for some, it should be noted that many track sprinters use smaller bars, so maybe its not that big a deal.

I should probably be on 44 or 46 bars based on measurements, but prefer 42s. And I enjoy good sprint. You'll be fine on the 38s [MENTION=22640]UmneyDurak[/MENTION] .

I guess it does. I mean, it must. I have a really long torso and really short quads. When I did a Guru fit last year the fitter, for kicks, asked if he could do the "no hands but still stable" position thing on me. This is where you can ride the drops and barely lift your hands off the bars without loading up your back, or something like that.

The result was comical. I was in some chopper position, saddle something like 20 cm back and down, and bars up and back a similar amount. I might as well have been riding an adult size Big Wheel.

Another thing is that although my bars are low my back is not super flat. It's close to level, yes, but it's not pointing down by any stretch of the imagination. Probably 5 degree up toward my head. So I'm not as low as the bike makes it look. I have a pretty regular position on the bike.

When I do a good sprint out of the saddle, and it's been eons since I've been this fast, I flicked my hands left-right while I was sprinting. It felt like rowing the bike sideways. I forced my feet/legs to keep up with my hands. When I was really good it absolutely loaded my core, to the point that it felt like I did a zillion crunches when I got back from a sprint ride (doing a 2 mile loop, sprinting each lap, for 1-3 hours).

If I'm fresh and doing jumps (5 seconds as hard as I can go) I definitely pull on the bars a lot. To the point where I'm limited by form and one wheel or the other my skip if I have my weight slightly off. Haven't done those in a while but should get back at it since my sprint has decreased. Also I think the gym will help. All around, seeing as my gym days I had higher sprint AND higher threshold.

When you say 'pull' what do you mean?
To me, pull means pull the bar towards your body, which would seem counterproductive as you're reducing the amount of force you can exert on the pedals. Maybe I'm just misunderstanding the physics of it all.

Each pedal stroke the body slightly lifts up and the bars may rock to the side, which is all lost power. Locking in or pulling on the bars mitigates those losses. For me, that adds about 100-200 extra watts, so for a good sprinter its probably even more.

Lots.

Not that I'm going do any upper-body lifting to help the sprint, but a good sprint involves pretty much everything.

OK, thanks for feedback. I'll keep the 38cm bars and see how it goes this season.

worst case, any time you lose a sprint you can blame the bars

Perfect. :lol:

you'll probably notice the difference at first, but most likely you'll get used to it.

adjustment has more to do with the elbows than the shoulders.

OTOH, there's a chance you might not prefer it even after that adjustment phase.

it's unlikely it is a true limiter in terms of your sprint, but confidence in one's gear is a huge thing.

Do any Specialized owners on the board experience issues with their seatpost's seat adjustment/retaining bolt? It's always been finicky for me, and the recommended torque specs don't hold the seat in place all that well at all. A couple of days ago I hit a pretty large bump which caused the seat to point nose down, and since then no matter how much I tighten the bolt the seat seems to nose back downward. Even easy spinning on the trainer tonight. I'm hoping it isn't smoked, maybe I could try some blue loctite or something?

never had that issue. see if your shop will swap posts for you and warranty the one you have?

TKP - I've hit some pretty gnarly bumps on my bike with an S-Works Pavé seatpost and haven't had any issues. I'm using a Chicane saddle with 7x9mm carbon rails, don't know if that would make a difference.

I was going to ask about this - I notice crazy skipping most of the time when I try to do a jump. I was pretty sure it is form related, but I was wondering if there was anything obvious I could focus on to improve this as opposed to just practicing it a lot and figuring it out eventually. Is it all a matter of balance - stay centered enough so that neither the back wheel or the front wheel lifts up? Or is there something I should be doing with my arms or body when I'm starting to jump to ensure I don't lose traction?

I had that issue for a bit when hitting big bumps. Someone recommended I take it apart, clean it up, and use carbon fiber paste on the clamping parts. Worked like a charm and haven't had any issues since.

My new team can get me a killer deal on a BMC Teammachine...if I can come up with the $$$ to pay for it :/ Uggghhh...

I want a climbing bike SO badly

Definitely use carbon paste.

Form sprints. Every season. Take the power out and concentrate on form, then gradually raise the power while working on form.

a: do you have the right bolt for the type/dimensions of saddle rail? you probably know about this--just asking to be sure.

b: torque spec is pretty damn high on it.

c: blue loctite is commonly applied there.