Mountain Bike With Aero Bars

The platt mountain bike handlebar aero bars are another set of superior set of tri bars for mountain bike at this level and work well for most mountain bikes.

Mountain bike with aero bars.

They flaunt a sleek carbon fiber tube super comfortable padding and well placed internal routing ports and reeks of quality through and through. My setup doesn t scream aero in the least. Before actually installing farr s updated carbon aero bolt on i may have rolled my eyes at the idea of clamping this thing onto my mountain bike s bars. Material choice is primarily a budget consideration with aluminum mountain bike handlebars typically costing less than their titanium or carbon cousins.

That puts my hands close to the stem. The majority of aero bars are designed to increase your speed on a road racing bike more specifically in the triathlon discipline. Your likely to only get benefit from short stubby aero bars and very unlikely to be able to get down on your elbows tt stylee without your knees banging off your chest negating any benefit as well as being very uncomfortable. I m not usually one to talk about aero anything.

As a road cyclist i prefer riding my road bike for longer rides over my time trial bike due to the comfort and increased control and i have never considered putting aero bars on a mtn bike but i ride mountain trails and not packed gravel. Some bars such as the thomson titanium mountain riser bar also purport to deliver a more compliant bump absorbing ride which can mean less hand fatigue especially during rough descents. I don t believe it is a safety issue so let people try to have some fun on curly bars if they want to. Make mountain bike courses technical enough and people will want to race mountain bikes.

Mountain biking is usually fast and furious with many turns and hills to maneuver where aero bars are generally made for flat surfaces and to pick up speeds. The thing is that sizing between almost all road bikes of similar sizes is within millimetres so aero bars don t actually have to be very adjustable for the most part. The frame of a mountain bike is completely unique to a road bike and they ve been built for different conditions than you d want to be using aero bars for. Then i flatten my back as much as possible giving me a flat back and forearms which present a smaller profile to the wind.

Back to the topic of aerodynamics on a mountain bike what i tend to do if i need to get aero on my mountain bike is move my hands close together but keep them on the handlebar.