You could post pics of your cannondale for us to get an idea of the geometry.


I have shitty wrists or thumbs or hands or something, and I'm always irritating them typing, kayaking, or biking. So this is what works for me.

I use the fsa carbon wing bars - but I get them wider than probably what I should be riding (I haven't measured). the 42 cms bars gives me a lot of flat for me to just hold my arms straight out on. I put bar gel on (either fizik or planet bike) and handlebar tape over that. It doesn't seem to matter whether it's a corky handlebar tape or not. You have to aim the flat on the handlebars so that it's keeping your wrists at a relaxed position. I have my handlebars at roughly the same height or a teensy bit above the seat.

TxDoc's been riding my litespeed some this week and flipped the stem down and moved the spacers - the bike looks very cool now, I'll have to give it a shot and see how it feels.


I also do best with gloves that have absolutely no padding - so I either get leather gloves, or I rip the padding out of the gloves I'm using. If I've got padded gloves, for whatever reason within about 15 mins my hands are numb. I like gloves that end above my wrist, so basically the pearl izumi ones, and I rip the padding out of them. If the velcro goes around my wrist or the gloves do, my hands go numb pretty quickly.

My litespeed/titanium frame is far nicer on my hands than my other bikes, but the carbon bike isn't bad either.

Too bad you don't live around here - I have a ton of spare handlebars and stems you could try. (Probably all in widths that are too wide for you). Isn't someone selling some round 38 cm bars off their specialized over in the for sale section? that might be a cheap way to try a different set of bars on your bike. Otherwise, specialized does sell adjustable stems which have little inserts that you can swap or flip around depending on what angle you want to try.