How to Adjust Cyclocross Bike Handlebar Width

Video Transcript

"MICKEY DENONCOURT: Setting up the handlebars on your cyclocross bike is going to be--you're going to look for different things than on a road bike. A road bike, you probably want the narrowest handlebars you can get away with and still being comfortable for aerodynamics. You know, the closer your hands are together, the lower your frontal area is. Cross, really, what you want more is you want a nice, wide handlebar for leverage for, you know, slow-speed riding and, you know, better bike handling and loose stuff. Then another thing that you usually end up doing when you're setting up your bars on the cross bike is you run your hoods, which, you know, your brake lever and all that stuff is a little bit higher up than you would on a road bike. If this was a road bike, instead of having--I probably have my bars rotated down a little bit more, so you get a little bit more drop and to just put myself in a more natural position for riding in the drops. Most people on cross bikes spend most of their time up here on the top of the handlebars, I mean, on the hoods, you know, on top of the hoods. So they end up--so you end up, you know, really optimizing your bike setup around that. So that's, once again, where the higher handlebars come in a little bit better. Because it makes it, you know, easier to ride in multiple positions and still have a high, you know, enough leverage over the front wheel that you can really corner and stuff like that. So, you know, look for a wider bar than you normally use for the road. Think about using something with a shorter reach and a lower drop as well, just to keep, you know, your position between the tops and the hoods and the drops more consistent, so the bike handles, you know, more similarly between all those positions."