drops/brakes

[VeloVT]

Hmmm... lots of stuff going on. I'm going to try to break my thoughts down into bites and number them so hopefully my response will seem somewhat coherent .

1. Depending on the kind of gel wrap you used, you may not have to totally unwrap your bars in order to move your hoods. I have partially unwrapped and rewrapped bars for adjustments before using the same tape with no problem. You have to be a little careful of course. The gel will make it more of a hassle, but even that is probably not insurmountable if you have patience.

2. Do you have a trainer? I know there's an inertia problem with putting your bike on a trainer when it's nice outside, knowing you will have to switch the skewer and everything the next time you want to ride outside ... But I think it would be helpful for you to set up your bike on a trainer so you can actually sit on it on focus on how each adjustment feels, without the distractions of an outside ride. Leave the bike on the trainer as you adjust it, and keep getting on it and trying it out until it feels right. Assuming you're not making HUGE changes (stem height, bar width, etc), 10 minutes on a trainer should give you a very good idea of whether or not it's going to work. By the way, changing handlebars should not make you sore, if they are the same size as you had before...

3. I agree with Lisa that you don't want to change everything at once. What was the rationale behind rolling the bars forward and moving the seat forward? Was that because you were feeling cramped? If so, I'm not sure that's a great solution, for two reasons -- first, you really don't want to get into using your saddle position to adjust your reach, because outside of a pretty small range that may be likely to cause knee issues. Second, while rolling the bar forward may give an illusion of more reach, it can also mess up your wrist angle which can cause pain or numbness over time. Do the new bars actually have shorter reach than the old bars? Or is it how you have set up the hoods? One thing you *could* try that would have a similar effect to rolling the bars forward would be to adjust the rise of your nice adjustable-rise stem so it puts you down a little lower. As Lisa says though, this will tend to put relatively more weight on your hands, and that may or may not be okay. A longer stem might help too, if your reach really feels cramped...

4. When you talk about gel "taking up room", where are you talking about? Are the drops feeling like the drop is too compact? Or something else? I will say that 38 cm bars in general do not have a lot of real estate on the tops. Some bars seem to have a little more than others for some reason, but all smaller bars have small tops. I never ride on the tops, and I think part if it is that there is so little usable space up there that I end up grasping with too narrow of a grip for comfort -- if I had 40 or 42 cm bars, I might ride on the tops sometimes...

Ok, enough for now... but I really do think you should consider throwing your bike up on a trainer (if you have one) and testing each adjustment as you make it.

good luck!