Originally Posted by Bat22

My Tricross makes a great winter commuter. I felt that 28s' made the ride more harsh.
Went back to 32s' with the belief that is the tire size the bike is engineered for.
Added the Shimano flight deck and the Dinotte light fits just right between the
front handlebar and safety brake levers. I use a pack instead of a rack.

Originally Posted by cod.peace

Just a dumb question...but have you calibrated your cyclocomputer correctly, if you're using that to judge speed?

Originally Posted by njkayaker

500 yards is a short distance. It's not a meaningful distance to determine relative speed. On longer distances over such terrain (or worse), it seems likely that the Tricross can be driven faster more comfortably.

Without numbers, "faster" is kind of hard to attribute much meaning to. I'm assuming "high ratio" means the "highest gear". If so, it's likely that the Tricross is geared lower there. If you were using the same gear size and the same cadence, the bikes would have to be moving at the same speed (actually, the Tricross would be moving a tiny bit faster). Accelleration in the Allez (especially uphill) might be a bit quicker. Unless you are spending a large proportion of your travel time accellerating or climbing hills, the difference in the overall time over a a real distance would probably be rather small.

And again, a lot of the difference (if there's a real difference) could be the tires.

Originally Posted by tjspiel

If out of the saddle acceleration is not a quick as the Allez I would attribute most of that to the tires. Aerodynamics and geometry wouldn't really come in to play. Weight of the bike and tires will contribute some.

If cruising along in the drops is slower, that again could be tires but aerodynamics will start to matter. Lowering the bars to get you more "aero" would help but might cause other problems. I'm not sure about the relative differences in geometry between the Tricoss and the Allez. If the Tricoss has a slacker seat tube angle then lower bars might be more uncomfortable than they would be on the Allez at a similar height. It might also lead to a loss of power. This is because your knees will end up closer to your chest while pedaling, - you'd have to scrunch more. You can get around this to some degree by moving your seat forward, - which may require a longer stem, - which could lead to handling weirdness.

Moving the seat forward is a trick triathletes use on standard road bikes to get the geometry closer to that of a tri-bike. The idea is to allow you to get your upper body lower without having to scrunch so much.

That's why I question the value of aero bars on hybrids, - at least hybrids designed with upright riding in mind. Riding lower on a bike like that will be more uncomfortable than it would be on a bike designed to be ridden that way.

Originally Posted by Hot Potato

I have not had a flat since switching to Specialized Armadillo tires. I was getting at least one flat a month on the stock tires prior to the switch. I think I have 28's on my road bike, I might try 25's when I wear them out.