The only thing I would add to all of this is be mindful not only of bar position but also seat height and setback. After years of playing around with different drop bars, bar heights, stem lengths, top tube lengths, etc, I've recently started paying more attention to saddle position. It's true that drop bars will pull your center of gravity forward compared to upright bars, but you can compensate for this by moving your saddle back some; I've found doing so allows me to still ride "light on the hands" even though I'm more stretched out. Once I discovered this, variances in bar/stem reach, height, top tube length etc. seem to make less of a difference for overall comfort.
This is especially an issue for me since I have long legs (i.e. femurs) and long feet (size 50 european)...plus I'm not all that skinny....so I really need to get way back there in order not to be riding on my arms. In fact, I've gone to a saddle most/all of the way back on a Nitto Wayback (S-84) post to generate a truly Lemond-esque riding position on my road bike, which has a 72-72.5 degree seat tube angle, depending on the position of the wheel in the dropouts. If you're interested, I'd recommend reading the older article by Keith Bontrager--"The Myth of KOPS"--that's posted on Sheldon's site. In my mind, it's got some really sound reasoning about the relationship between center of gravity and pedaling position. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rbw-owners-bunch/-/20_cTex_XVYJ. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
