marna, Hi. In what way are lower brake levers or bars less comfortable ? back? wrists? shoulders ? neck ?
Shoulders and neck, mostly. I find that to cover the brakes, I have to bend my elbows more than I'd like, and this causes me curve my upper back and shoulders and tense my shoulders and neck. I think my wrists would start complaining after a couple of miles on the drops, but I've never used them for that long. If I'm not covering the brakes I'm fine, but I'm far too cautious to go very swiftly at all without *knowing* that I can brake at a moment's notice. Or, if I'm descending, braking gently as I go. Possibly more fearless cyclists (that would be 99% of them) would be fine with my setup.
Your description sounds pretty much spot on, actually. If I could move the brakes a lot lower, or a lot nearer, it would be fine, but that's incompatible with having comfy hoods, from my experimenting. I don't have STIs, and that was partly because they made the hoods chunkier and I have fairly small hands. (It was mostly because of wanting friction shifting.)
What sort of bars do you use, out of interest? I probably can't afford to change mine yet (and I don't *need* to - I really very rarely take the bike (or me) out of London, and drops are not really useful in London, at least for very long), but ideas on what I might be looking at would be useful.