Aero suggestions

The most obvious things from that photo are:

- Lower your head. Ideally the top of your helmet should be even with the highpoint of your back not well above it. Practice 'turtling' your head by relaxing your shoulders and letting your neck and head sag down between your shoulder blades. Another way to work into this position is to totally relax your neck until your head is hanging down loose and your looking at your rear derailleur, then roll your head back up just enough to see up the road by leading with your chin. Practice this with the bike on a trainer or leaning up against a wall till it feels natural.

- You look cramped up with the elbow pads awfully close to your knees and your upper arms at a very steep angle. Can you move the pads further forward or swap in a longer stem? It actually looks like your normal road position would also be cramped and benefit from a longer stem.

- It would be great from an aero standpoint if you could lower the bars either by swapping stem spacers or possibly a steeper drop stem if your flexibility allows it.

-Dave

I figured a picture might help. Here's some frame grabs from some TT fitting video I took this spring. The shots here compare the natural position I tend to hold my head if I don't do anything special versus either relaxing my shoulders and letting my head and neck drop or the more involved total relaxation, lifting from the chin that I described above. In either of the latter two cases I'm pretty much looking out of the top of my eye sockets to see far up the road and riding with frameless sunglasses or no sunglasses helps a lot for that. It takes practice and isn't something I do naturally but it's definitely helped my speed and time trial times when I focus on what I'm doing with my head.

I've also included a shot taken during a race this spring (a slightly different and higher overall position but the point is the head shrug) to show that with practice I've been able to ride a fairly low if not the lowest possible head tuck throughout races even when working hard.

Anyway I don't claim to have the best possible TT position but regardless of the overall position it really helps to keep the head down and out of the wind and that takes conscious thought and practice.

Good luck,
-Dave

Dave, I made a couple of the changes you suggested. I moved the aero-bars forward and the pads. I also shifted my seat back to make me less cramped, and lowered the seat height accordingly to counteract the fore/aft change.

Here is the result.
[ame=[MEDIA=youtube]L3zGCy9V-jM[/MEDIA]]YouTube - Aero position test[/ame]

Is this better?

Rob,
It looks like you've got the idea and are moving in the right direction. You should go out and road test that position and see what it feels like.

You might find that pushing the saddle back robs you of power as it tends to close up your hip angle. If you don't ride with a power meter it might be hard to know for certain but tune into how you feel in that position, perhaps time yourself on some known road segments and see if you actually go faster further back.

You might also work on rotating your pelvis more so that you're not sitting quite as upright on the saddle with such a pronounced 'break' in your lower back where you bend forward. This also takes practice and sometimes a subtle seat angle adjustment but can help the overall position. The basic idea is to grind your 'taint' into the saddle tip so that your spine in the lumbar region straightens out a bit rather than sitting more upright with a lot of bend in the back.

But to my eyes at least it looks like you've got a good starting point for field testing and fine tuning.

Good luck,
-Dave

Sorry to bring this back from the dead. I was searching for just this information, so thanks to Dave for asking and a great many thanks to Dave for his as always (as always) great wisdom!