Several whose histories are more closely associated with multisport than with cycling have, of late, found the TT crowd. Or the TT crowd has found us. Gerard Vroomen, Steve Hed, John Cobb, all are fitters or advisors to cycling's stars. While I typically don't fit people other than those who attend my tri bike fit workshops, I nevertheless find myself fitting more and more pro cyclists to their bikes. I've positioned fifteen or so over the last month: U.S.-only racers along with those who'll race in Europe, men and women both.

I thought I'd write about this topic, because a lot of people wonder how it is bike racers (when time trialing) look so much like triathletes these days, notwithstanding the more restrictive rules by which they must abide. First, I'll write about the process of fitting road racers to their TT bikes. Second, we'll talk about their rules.

If I know the fit coordinates the athlete has been using aboard his TT bike, I'll set up my fit bike to match those specs. I'll have the rider hop aboard and give me a demonstration of how he rides at power. That gives me an idea how this cyclist has been riding his or her TT bike.

Then we have a talk. I ask him who the team sprinter is, and then I ask him to imagine it's 3k or 5k, from the line, and it's going to be a bunch finish. The rider's team is controlling the tempo. The rider takes his long, fast, tense turn at the front. I ask him to describe his riding style, specifically his cadence, as well as his posture aboard the bike.

In each case the athlete gives me an identical narrative: riding with a flat back, hands in the drops, on the nose, at a cadence something north of 100 rpm. "Great," I say, "You're familiar with your TT position. That's it. All we have to do is place a pair of armrests underneath you, so that you can ride that position comfortably for the duration of your time trial."

Road racers get this, that is, they understand it at first telling (I'm describing it to a group of road racers at right, photo courtesy of Rob O'Dea). This makes road racers easier to position than triathletes. Mind, they're going to end up in the same position as triathletes, but they understand the dynamics of this position right off, more readily than do triathletes. Triathletes have to find this position from scratch. Road racers have plenty of experience riding this TT position. It's just that for many of them, they just never knew it was their TT position.

There are two differences between this high-speed, high-cadence "on the rivet" position near the end of a bunch-sprint race, and the time trial position they're soon to adopt. First, the TT position will likely be slightly more forward still. This requires riding on the nose in a way TT riders may not be familiar with. Second, the cadence, though high in any case, will vary specific to the duration of the time trial. If it's a prologue, yes, perhaps 100 rpm, or 105. If the timed event is 30k or 50k, the cadence (especially later in the race) might be more like 95 rpm.

At this point I position the rider precisely as I would a triathlete (described at great detail elsewhere on Slowtwitch). The TT rider chooses between a set of consecutively steeper seat angles, and chooses where he intends to ride. This yields a position that has both good and bad news attached to it.

"The good news," I tell them, "is that we've found your ideal position." I don't need to explain this. They know it already.

"The bad news," I continue, "is that it's illegal under the UCI's rules." But there are two workarounds. First, I make the position legal. How to do this? As they're on my fit bike I instruct them to stay precisely where they are -- to remember and maintain this riding position -- and then I pull the saddle back to a point 5cm behind the BB (I happen to know precisely where this is on my fit bike). In this way they find out just how far out on the nose they can in fact ride.

The greatest amount of fore/aft positioning available to an athlete is not the degree to which the bike designer steepens or shallows his bike's seat angle. It's in where the rider sits on the saddle. If he only moves for and aft over a third of the saddle's length, he's changing is effective seat angle by 7, 8 or 9 degrees, depending on the rider's height. It is not hard to get a road rider to time trial at 78 or 79 degrees of relative sea angle, if he's riding the right saddle and if he learns to nose-ride.

In the case of a female road racer I positioned just yesterday, her biggest problem was the saddle. She wanted to ride, "...like the triathletes, who look so comfortable." But she rode quite rearward. The culprit was the saddle, a hard Selle Italia with a raised seam running right down the center of the nose. Fortunately, the saddle aboard which she was most comfortable (I keep all the typical tri saddles on hand) was another Selle Italia, the SLR T1. It's a favorite of triathletes and is also perfect for a lot of Selle Italia sponsored TT riders (as this gal was).

The question now becomes, must these road riders sit on the very nose of the saddle, or is it possible to move the saddle more underneath them, as is the case with triathletes? We must visit the UCI rulebook. There are two rules that hedge us in, and they are 1.3.013 and 1.3.023. The first hampers mostly shorter riders, the second confounds mostly taller riders.

The first of these rules, 1.3.013, says that the tip of the rider's saddle shall be no further forward than 5cm behind the bike's bottom bracket. To explain the nature of the problem, consider a rider perhaps 5'6" or 5'7" tall, who may have a saddle height of 70cm, measuring from the BB to the top of the saddle. A line drawn from the bottom bracket to the center of that saddle's rail's will yield a seat angle of about 72 degrees. A rider 6'2", with a saddle height of 80cm, will be riding a seat angle of closer to 75 degrees.

The rule provides for what's called a morphological exception, and if a rider is especially short, or has a short femur, he or she can apply to have the saddle moved forward of that spot.

How is such an application made, and how often is it granted? According to the rules, the riders are given a "test" by the commissaires prior to the race. You pedal the bike, and the forward protrusion of your knee cannot pass in front of the pedal axle. Of course, you simply ride on the rearward part of the saddle during the test. As one highly-placed federation technical director put, "Everyone who takes the test passes, and these people get to ride a position unavailable to the naive or unaware."

How possible is it that there are naive or unaware riders out there? Almost every TT rider I position, and their directeurs sportif, are among the naive and unaware. I must explain the rules, and the test, when to apply for it, and how to take it.

Still, I recommend to these riders that they take whatever tools are needed to place their saddles further to the rear, in case a commissaire fails to honor their request. In this case their positions will not change, just their levels of comfort.

Taller riders face rule 1.3.023, which says that the maximum distance from the bottom bracket to the forward protrusion of the aerobars cannot exceed 75cm. But, you can get an extra 5cm if you take "the test." This consists of adopting the aero position aboard your bike, with your elbow angle not exceeding 120 degrees. For this test you ride on the very tip of the saddle, and you extend your arms forward to that 120 degree angle.

Of course, while you probably do ride on the tip of the saddle, you certainly don't actually ride with this elbow angle. Nobody does. Typical elbow angles are more like 90 degrees, unless you have your bars angled down. And we must also ignore that the angle the UCI should've required for this test was the shoulder angle, not the elbow angle.

For those who need to take these tests -- who are racing under the UCI rulebook -- the intention to seek a morphological exception must be made at race check-in, that is, when one presents the racing license to the commissaires. It might seem a more economical use of everyone's time and effort to make a proactive rule that follows the athlete from race to race, in the form of a letter such as the one from his doctor allowing his use of an asthma inhaler. In fact, the widespread rumor is that such letters do exist, that top athletes have them, they are issued by national federations, and the athletes present them to commissaires at events. But the technical advisor for the UCI, Jean Waulthier, denies any knowledge of these letters and says they are either not in existence or, if do exist they "...are certainly not honored by the commissaires." Or if they are honored, "it is a serious mistake."

Of course, the problem with the rules as they are written is that angular measures are subject to X and Y limitations. By saying the saddle must not exceed a certain place on a Y axis, you're favoring the taller rider at the expense of the shorter. You're granting him an unfair advantage. This is fixable, and easily measurable by race commissaires. Simply make the morphological exception to 1.3.013 a function of saddle height. You get a 1cm variance from the rule if your saddle height is between 73cm and 75cm. You get an additional centimeter for each 2cm increment below 73cm. At a saddle height below 67cm, your saddle would be even with the bottom bracket.

The wool-jerseyed set might think a saddle nose over the bottom bracket akin to blasphemy. But this is precisely the legal placement every track rider of any height is afforded, as long as he's riding sprint, keirin, 500m or the kilo (how silly is it that the technical bike rules when riding a kilo differ from the rules when you ride in a pursuit?).

As a notorious former U.S. cabinet secretary put it, "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you want." UCI riders go to war with the rulebook they have, not with one that makes sense. Fortunately, the rulebook allows for workarounds, and it's the enterprising rider who takes advantage of them.

There is one further element to the bike fit as I apply it for time trialers. I explain that this position is a powerful one, but at high cadences and the power leaves when the position is abandoned. In other words, stay in the aero bars. Even when climbing. Accelerations are best achieved out of the saddle. A constant speed is best maintained in the aero bars. Gear the bike accordingly, so that the grade you'll encounter is rideable at 100 rpm or thereabouts.

As for when to ride in the aero position versus out of the saddle, that's one that a rider determines over time and through spending that time in your TT bike's saddle. Accordingly, road riders are spending a lot more time on their TT bikes these days than used to be the case.

The salient truth to UCI-specific time trial positioning bursts the urban myth. Not only are UCI-rule-encumbered riders essentially riding triathlon positions, they almost universally choose to, when given various options. Nobody talks of using "running muscles" with which to ride. As one rider recently put it to me, "When I was riding rearward my quads burned. I couldn't recruit my glutes and my hamstrings. I couldn't generate power." It isn't that bike racers want to favor hamstrings over quadraceps. It's simply that they want to use all their thigh musculature, not simply the anterior set.

This also impinges on bike design. The idea that bike makers are constrained to make a bike for UCI-legal riding, and that this differs from the bikes triathletes would choose, is a myth. Triathletes and road racers, if each are given their choice of position, and each is expertly fit, will typically end up riding identical positions, rules notwithstanding. This explains why pro road racers sponsored by Trek, Felt and Cervelo ride so successfully on the bikes these companies properly engineer for triathletes.

It also explains why riders like Dave Zabriskie, Fabian Cancellara, and Bobby Julich, appear to be riding positions much like those ridden by your favorite triathletes. These are the same positions, it's just that in many or most cases the majority of the saddle is not underneath the riders, but several centimeters behind them.