Pretty fair to compare stock with stock imo.
I’m not saying they are wrong but do you really expect a company making aero kit to claim anything other than aero kit is the first thing you should upgrade?
I suggest you read the answer from Sam (Rule28): Rule 28 AQA - All Things Aero! - #3 by Rule28 the post is nuanced and doesn’t shout “buy our kit” at all.
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I probably should have checked the thread instead of trusting someone else’s interpretation of what was actually said.
The crazy part about that list is I did everything but shave my legs and buy a skinsuit. I dont want the leg maintenance and I don’t like how I look in a skinsuit HA!
I wonder how far you get by trimming instead of shaving the legs. On a chewbacca-scale from 1-10 I‘d say I‘m a solid 7 and I too don’t want the maintenance.
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I’ll counter that by asking can you trust bike companies who are desperate to sell their iterative upgrades every few years that their frames truly are stiffer yet more compliant and truly save X amount of time over X amount of distance over the previous generation? I think it’s been outed that the newest madone is only faster with the aero bottles and shows no improvement with conventional bottles and cages. I dare say it’s a pick your poison as those who afford to spend time in the wind tunnel would have some skin in the game. Josh Portner might be least biased/straightest shooter on this but even he has aero socks to sell. I want to say an AJA podcast episode probably covered this topic as well but feel free to ask him again as I wouldn’t mind hearing his current thoughts on useful aero hierarchy if it makes it into the show.
I don’t understand why people are still debating the validity of bicycle marketing department claims.
Aero has peaked. A new aero frame today is not going to be appreciably faster than a bike from a few years ago. It’s the same with wheels. Three years form now, it’s going to be the same thing. A handful of watts here or there which isn’t much in the big picture.
It’s been 15 years since we had Cancellara on aero wheels speeding away from a peloton on box section rims and 36 years since Lemond won the Tour with aero bars.
But doesn’t that apply to virtually everything in the marginal gains category, including weight?
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Yes, we are past the low hanging fruit. And weight doesn’t matter that much since they have the 6.8kg rule.
My point is that people should stop arguing over marketing materials. I don’t care if they call it a “white paper”. It’s not science. So what if they put a new cockpit on a bike, narrow the bars by a couple of centimeters and call it the greatest thing ever. Nobody needs to buy a new generation bike every few years unless they just like spending money.
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Yes! But we like spending money.
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I’m sure they cook the books so to speak, but I do trust Tour testing to some degree. I also don’t upgrade every cycle so the last bike I had before my 2024 Madone was a 2016 Emonda and yes there was definitely a felt difference in speed (probably 20w+ aero), comfort, and stiffness. Going Tarmac SL7 to SL8 for example, probably harder to feel though some swear they do.
I’ll hopefully keep the Madone forever since to me it’s really a dream bike, and maybe supplement it with something that can take bigger tires and more adventures. Aero bikes aren’t going to get meaningfully faster or lighter for quite some time but we shouldn’t be denying that they are faster than round tubed bikes from a decade ago
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Recently upgraded from 2017 Aeroad to new one. I suspect fairly minimal bike aero gains but maybe a few watts here and there from fully hiding the cables, deeper tube cross sections as a result of UCI rule changes, and just some incremental improvements from 8 years of development and testing.
The far more noticeable improvements have come from:
- disc brakes, which do translate to real world speed as I can brake later into corners
- ability to run wider tires - more brake and frame clearance mean it’s possible to do this, and there is room for wide rims which allow this to be done without an aero penalty. Previously the only rims that fitted within the rim brake calipers were narrow enough to be optimised for ~23-25mm so while you could just about squeeze a 28mm in there it would bulge wider than the rim which is likely costing watts. I don’t think going wider is more aero, but if you want to go wider for comfort/grip/road surface reasons then a bike and wheel combo that allows you to do that without paying an aero penalty is obviously faster than one that doesn’t
- Ease of setup. Adjustable width bars, adjustable stem height without having to cut steerer tube, wireless Di2 shifters meaning that there are 2 fewer cables and no junction box to consider when playing around with the cockpit. This likely makes little or no difference to the pros who can get whatever parts they need and have mechanics to fit them to dial their bike in. But for an amateur who may want to play with bar width and height this could lead to big aero gains from position changes. If I wanted to try going narrower on the old bike I had to go the huge expense and hassle of buying a whole new set of bars and recabling everything. Both Canyon and other brands have been moving away from the one piece bars with fully internal cabling which can only be replaced and not adjusted. I would expect to see continued innovation in that area which will lead to real world gains for us amateurs.
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So the top photo was last week on my steel framed genesis Volare. The second was today on my carbon Merida reacto. Weather conditions were very similar, wind in the same direction. Can’t compare power as the genesis doesn’t have a power meter. My average and maximum heart rate were exactly the same 140/165.
I know there are a lot of other variables as play but I still believe for the average rider aero bikes don’t make much difference. I love riding my aero bike though and I’ll continue to do so but knowing it’s Not going any faster than my old steel bike 
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I do not know how fast the average rider rides, but the faster you go, the bigger your aero gains are.
Most studies are made with +40 km/t so I’m not surprised that you didn’t see a big difference going around 28 km/t.
You already know the variables around wind and not having power meter on both, so I will not comment on that 
Ps. I love my Merida Reacto also. Just the look makes me feel like I’m going brrrrrm. And that is enough, right?
Yeah that is enough really isn’t it? I’d forgotten how much fun the reacto is. I’ve usually got tri bars on it. I took them off today and it really does make the bike handle much better. Despite being no faster than my Genesis (that I also love) I really felt like I’d gone a lot faster today and was shocked to see the result, I guess I was just having a good time
Please don’t take this the wrong way but sub-18mph on a not very hilly route is not going to give you much indication of aero performance. That was one of the criticisms of the Gen 8 Madone, in their whitepaper they claimed it was the same as the previous bike but only at 22mph/200w on the flats which is a low and random speed and not used by anyone else in the industry. Now if you’re going say 18mph into a 10mph headwind, you’ll start seeing the gaps grow due to the air speed you’re seeing, ground speed isn’t hugely relevant in aero.
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Let’s face it - the average rider never NEEDS a new bike.
If you had power on both bikes, the aero bike could have take 10 watts less at that speed. Hardly enough to notice, but real.
I put 50mm aero wheels on my non aero Colnago and it made a world of difference when attacking KOMs or taking a pull at the front of a group ride. An aero frame itself doesn’t make an enormous difference. The biggest difference is in the wheels. Frames save something like 10 watts. Bars like 3-5 watts. The whole package is a decent savings though, especially at race pace.
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The biggest aero gain of my aero road bike (a 3T Strada) is that it puts me in a more aggressive position. That gain is very real, but has zero to do with tube shapes.
That’s an excellent point, because it tells you what you can gain on a “regular” frame (almost all carbon frames these days have some aero features) you need to upgrade wheels and cockpit and get most of the gains of a “full” aero bike.
The only other and arguably more important aero gain is taking something like a yoga course so that you can sustain a more aero body position for longer on the bike.
If I remember correctly, you can see aero gains as low as 22+ km/h (whatever that is in miles) in that you will have appreciable gains if you adopt a more aero body position. Clearly, since aero drag increases with the cube of speed, the importance of aero drag will become more significant at 30+ km/h, but you can still see it.