aero bar blues......

[40thvette]

After battling my second season of my hands falling asleep, I finally bought an aero bar setup. I bought the Airstryke profiles. I like the idea of the elbow rests poping up when not in use. Anyway, I am really having a hard time getting use to them. Feels very unstable & I feel like I could wipe out easily. The bike I have now doesn't have a very positive caster to the forks, so its a fairly darty bike compared to my old road bike.

I am guessing its something I just need to get used to, but the bigger problem is the geometry of the way it positions me on the bike. Even though I have the elbow pads set up on the "highest" position, I am still bent over too far. When I pedal, as my leg comes up, it is very uncompfortable in my waist, or abdomen area. My bike & seat hight is set up for my height, & pelvic height so I am not sure if I have any options? I was really hoping this would be the answer to sleepy hands..... Any thoughts?

 

[40thvette]

 

[daveryanwyoming]

Sounds like you've got a few fit issues to work out.

- The hands falling asleep with standard bars could be as simple as hand positions, better gloves, how you're holding your wrists or the other standard culprits. But it could also imply too much weight on the front end, possibly an overly low front end or even a saddle too far forward that puts too much weight on the bars.

- Add in the aero bars, particularly the type you've shown in the photo where you can't move the pads back behind the base bars and you've likely got way too much weight on the front end of the bike which isn't good from a handling perspective.

Personally I'd visit a bike fitter, not the run of the mill salesperson at your LBS but spend a few bucks and get fitted either with or without the aero bars.

But if you still want the aero bars you can improve the situation a bit. Remember they're primarily marketed as 'aero' bars, not 'comfort' bars but a lot of folks have found ways to set them up for the latter. Try to find a clamp kit that allows you to slide the pads behind the mounting point on the handlebars as well as a rise kit that brings the pad up another cm or two. The clamps used on the Profile T2+ and similar bars work well and I've seen them packaged for sale as just the clamps in some triathlon focused stores. That way you can shorten the cockpit, get a bit more stable steering, take a bit of weight off the front end and raise the pads up.

If that's not enough get a stem with a steeper rise to bring your bars up higher, again a good bike fitter can steer you through this process and save you a lot of money over the trial and error approach a lot of folks go through.

But basically you want to be set up so that the bike is very comfortable and the steering feels safe and inspires confidence. Sure it takes some time to get used to steering with your forearms but if the bike is set up well it's no big deal.

Good luck,
-Dave