Drop Bars, Am I Missing Something?

[cosmicbike]

I experienced the same aches/pains when going from a flat bar hybrid onto my first road bike this Summer. Just shy of 200 miles riding and quiet a few minor adjustments of saddle height, fore/aft position and so forth and it was about right, though the overall riding position of a road bike does take some getting used to.

 

[amaferanga]

Too much weight on your hands and/or gripping the bars too tight.

So as suggested above, you may need to tweak saddle angle (fore/aft saddle position should be set relative to the bottom bracket and not used to adjust reach), bar height, angle of hoods and stem length. It's possible that the monkey that set your bike up put the levers in the wrong place so the transition from bars to hood could be all wrong. Just rotating the bars up can put the brake levers in an unusable position when you're on the drops so you may need to move them up/down the bars a bit and probably redo bartape.

 

[Dave W]

Thanks for the advice all, after tweaking the saddle position and bar angle it's a lot lot better and feels much more natural. There's still room for improvement but it's clearly a lot better. Also got a KOM on the way back from work so must be doing something right. :-)