Drops or bullhorns?
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@dcv 77238 wrote:
I go back and forth between drops and bullhorns every few months. I like drops better, it’s not very comfortable without hoods but multiple hand positions trumps for me. Besides climbing and sprinting in the drops is badass.
What are you getting?
Leaning heavily toward a State. Right in my budget and I really like their style/choices. The Matte Black 4.0 is basically sitting in my shopping cart waiting for me to click “submit”, but I gotta decide on the bars first.
@TwoWheelsDC 77239 wrote:
Leaning heavily toward a State. Right in my budget and I really like their style/choices. The Matte Black 4.0 is basically sitting in my shopping cart waiting for me to click “submit”, but I gotta decide on the bars first.
Nice. Just buy it and get an extra set of bars. You can switch easily if you have cross brake levers, even easier if you don’t have brakes.
Handlebar shapes and sizes can really make a difference to your fit. IMO: riding drops without hoods messes with your fit if you’re used to riding in the hoods. You’ll end up with two main usable positions – the tops, and the drops. If you want to use something similar to the hoods, your wrists end up at uncomfortable angles. My FG came with traditional (non-compact) dropbars and I left them spec’ed like that as I’d never tried them – but now I think I will swap them out. I do use the “elbows/shoulders” position too but it’s not that comfortable. That said, riding FG seems different enough for me that I think I could get used to just having a single lever on the tops.
I’ve never had proper bullhorns, but when I first started riding SS I used a flat bar (with a slight sweep) with bartaped barends, which is similar. pic here. I really liked that setup for climbing (I loved barends when they first came out) but I changed it because I wanted drops – partly for aesthetics but also because I do use drop positions, and because the bars were too wide, so I had excess handlebar sticking out. But I don’t do 60+ mile rides on that bike, and in hindsight I think the “bullhorn” setup was generally more comfortable – although this is also due to the frame being a hybrid, so it’s not a compact road geometry, so the top tube is actually a bit long for me with drop bars, and the drop bars I used aren’t as compact as the ones on my road and CX bikes. Having the brakes on the tops only was never an issue. Oh, another reason I canned barends is you can’t use them in CX races, and this bike fits 32s…
Like dcv said, I would consider getting a set of your favorite compact dropbars and using those with drop bar brake hoods – SRAM makes nice ones for non-geared riders (the 900 which I think Bilsko has, there’s also the 500). Tektro makes them too (I have the RL520 or something similar; the reach is a perhaps bit long).
If you don’t have the budget yet then just pick or the other until you can upgrade. Where’s the fun in getting a stock bike and not changing anything?
@vvill 77242 wrote:
Handlebar shapes and sizes can really make a difference to your fit. IMO: riding drops without hoods messes with your fit if you’re used to riding in the hoods. You’ll end up with two main usable positions – the tops, and the drops. If you want to use something similar to the hoods, your wrists end up at uncomfortable angles. My FG came with traditional (non-compact) dropbars and I left them spec’ed like that as I’d never tried them – but now I think I will swap them out. I do use the “elbows/shoulders” position too but it’s not that comfortable. That said, riding FG seems different enough for me that I think I could get used to just having a single lever on the tops.
I’ve never had proper bullhorns, but when I first started riding SS I used a flat bar (with a slight sweep) with bartaped barends, which is similar. pic here. I really liked that setup for climbing (I loved barends when they first came out) but I changed it because I wanted drops – partly for aesthetics but also because I do use drop positions, and because the bars were too wide, so I had excess handlebar sticking out. But I don’t do 60+ mile rides on that bike, and in hindsight I think the “bullhorn” setup was generally more comfortable – although this is also due to the frame being a hybrid, so it’s not a compact road geometry, so the top tube is actually a bit long for me with drop bars, and the drop bars I used aren’t as compact as the ones on my road and CX bikes. Having the brakes on the tops only was never an issue. Oh, another reason I canned barends is you can’t use them in CX races, and this bike fits 32s…
Like dcv said, I would consider getting a set of your favorite compact dropbars and using those with drop bar brake hoods – SRAM makes nice ones for non-geared riders (the 900 which I think Bilsko has, there’s also the 500). Tektro makes them too (I have the RL520 or something similar; the reach is a perhaps bit long).
If you don’t have the budget yet then just pick or the other until you can upgrade. Where’s the fun in getting a stock bike and not changing anything?
Yeah, I have a spare set of drops that might work in a pinch, if I decide bullhorns aren’t for me. But frankly, I can’t get past the practicality issue and I think I gotta go bullhorns…and then I can change if necessary.
track drops are swept forward so that your forearms / knees won’t hit the bars when sprinting hard (side to side) in the drops. You can’t mount brake hoods on these because of the curve. these usually have deep drops for maximum leverage in sprints.
road drops have straight top bars.
my favorite are narrow (36-38cm) compact road drops:
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