While triathletes are three-sporters, we resemble what the baseball world calls a one-tool athlete: Triathletes can hit with power. Triathletes are the DHers of the cycling milieu. No finesse, all swat. We can't corner, ride a cadence, sprint, or descend. Tactically, we belong in special ed.
But if you put us on a flat, straight road and you don't endanger anyone else's life by situating us proximate to—within 30 feet or so—the innocent, we can go like heck.
This is how the cycling world sees us, and you can only partly blame them. We need to up our game, and one way to do that is to arm ourselves with the proper arrows in our quiver. The cycling world agrees, and doesn't understand why we just don't do this, because the cycling world thinks we're all wealthy.
As regards the quiver and arrows, one example of where the cycling world has it all over us is in the very pragmatic category of wheels. The day after you or I buy our $2500 tri bike we start contemplating which $3500 wheelset we're going to add to it. I suggest we turn our attention briefly to another kind of wheelset. What's the most likely thing that'll put your bike out of commission? It's the bad things that happen to wheels.
Wheels are on the front lines in the battle of man versus road. A triathlete rides 7, or 10, or 15 training miles for every 1 mile he races. Potholes dent his rims. Uneven tensioning in his bike's original equipment wheels break his spokes. A bad batch of steel conspires to crack his hub's pawls. And when these evils occur, that rider is closed for business.
For this reason, seasoned cyclists know that the single most important accessory in their garages is that second set of all-purpose wheels. Contrast this with triathletes. Alex Poon of All3Sports in Atlanta says his aftermarket wheel sales run 90 percent high-end carbon racing, to 10 percent for the workmanlike training wheels written about here.
There are two types of aftermarket training wheels for your consideration: factory-built wheels versus the hand-built variety that generally come out of your retail store. By factory-built I'm not just talking about the OEM wheels that come on your bike. It's the wheels that come from Shimano, Bontrager, Easton, Mavic, and others that are pre-built and typically feature hubs, spokes and rims that only work as a set.
These are the most common aftermarket wheels, the sexiest looking, and often they're quite value priced. Speaking of price, wheels are not a product category where MSRP is rigorously maintained by the manufacturer, though there are some exceptions. Right now you can find the entry level Shimano factory wheelset, the WH-500, for as low as $150, compared to its MSRP of $190. I found wheelsets by Fulcrum, Reynolds, Campagnolo, Easton, all selling for substantially below MSRP.
Mavic does a bit better at protecting retail. It says its Aksium wheels should sell for $250. While I found an '07 model selling new for $199, the price you pay for a set of new 08 wheels is reliably around the retail price.
Most of the retailers I interviewed feel that 400 dollars is an important price point. "Four hundred is the point where you can find a nice, reliable pair of wheels," according to All3Sports' Poon. Dave Hess of the famed metro-Boston shop Belmont Wheelworks agrees. "That's the price where you want to start. Reliability, stiffness, freehub quality, roundness, and an even spoke tension, you should expect that at four hundred dollars."
One of the most popular wheelsets at this price point is the Easton EA70. This replaced the Circuit, which was the workhorse of the Easton line. It's priced at $500 but I was able to easily find a set for $400. This wheelset is laced 24f/28r, with Sapim spokes and an alloy cassette body, it and weighs 1635g.
Compare this to Mavic's Ksyrium Equipe, which sells for around $375 a set, features 18f/20r, and weighs 1770g for the pair.
Fulcrum is a subsidiary of Campagnolo, and makes very functional road wheels for Campy and Shimano. It's Racing5 weighs 1755g for the set, are laced 20f/24r, and while this wheelset has an MSRP of $500 they're reliably found for $400 or under (Excel Sports has this wheel on closeout for $320 a pair as of this writing).
Other companies making wheels in this category, and for prices around this level, are Ritchey, Shimano, Cane Creek, DT Swiss, Bontrager, and FSA. The latter company's popular RD-220 is pictured above, and is a good wheelset obtainable at a price in the low 300s.
A lesser known company worth considering is Neuvation Cycling. Long time Asian bike factory habitue John Neugent set up the Velomax wheel factory in Taiwan. Velomax was an Easton brand and now the wheels bear only the Easton sticker. Neuvation is his company, and its R28 SL5 wheels are on sale as of this writing for $329 pair, and at 1480g a set are lighter than any of the wheels mentioned above. They are laced with Sapim double butted stainless steel spokes, and Neuvation's R series uses the same alloy cassette body found on many of the higher-end wheels made by Easton, FSA and others.
Why are the prices on Neuvation's wheels attractive? First, the wheels are sold consumer direct. Second, the wheels are purposely unfancy. They feature regular J-bend spokes, and wheels like this are less sexy looking than the funky spoke patterns and brightly colored parts. But they're highly functional, and they lead us into a mention of another way to go for that second set of wheels.
So far, we've only considered factory built wheels. An alternative is to have your local bike shop build you a set of wheels. In this case, you'll end up with a wheelset that is, like the Neuvations, more traditional in appearance. There are advantages. "With many factory built wheels," said Joe King from Biketiresdirect.com, "You can't walk into bike shop anywhere and say 'I've busted a spoke.'"
"You can fine tune the features you're looking for, by choosing the spoke gauge and lacing pattern, the hub, the rim," Wheelworks' Hess explains of hand built wheels. "Every shop in business is going to be able to repair a hand built wheel with a broken stainless spoke. And these wheels price price-competitive."
A pair of good rims, such as a Mavic Open pro or CXP33, are going to cost about $130 or $140 a pair. Lacing these up with good spokes and nipples around an Ultegra hubset, expect to pay, all in, about $375 to $400 for your wheels. Not bad, when you consider an Ultegra wheelset factory-built is $550.
Going the handmade route assumes you have a good wheel builder in your area. For this, I might eschew your recently-opened tri shop and find an old, established road racing pro shop. Locate the guy who's been building wheels in that shop for 20 or 30 years.
Pay no attention to the aerodynamics in these wheels. They aren't your race wheels. When you realize these are just for training, and their goal is to stay round, and straight, true, and in dish, and not to make you more aero, you can think about the qualities that you care about during your everyday riding. For example, hand-built wheels built in a three-cross spoke pattern will be slightly more forgiving over the hard bumps than the sexy radial laced race wheels. This means a more comfortable ride, fewer dented rims, fewer pinch flats.
My personal choice in training wheels are Hed's new Ardennes. They feature a wider rim, at 23mm versus the typical 20mm or so. The tire makes a U-shape instead of a hoop-shape to fit into these rims, so the sidewalls of the tire add to its stiffness. This means I can put less air in the tire. The wheelset is very light, at 1360g, and it would be hard to find another wheelset both this light and this strong. There are two issues wiith this Ardennes. Its extra width means you have to widen your brake calipers when subbing these for another wheelset. And then there is the price. They cost just under 1000 dollars for the set. I only mention them here, in the context of an article featuring wheels that cost around $400, because I invariably get asked what I ride.
Now, to be honest, this $350 or $400 for a set of wheels isn't the entire expense. You'll certainly want to make these ride-ready, and that means tires, tubes and a cassette. This may bring the price of the wheels up to $500.
What about wheels for 650c riders?
"A lot of companies are diminishing what they're doing in 650c," said R&A Cycles' Al Cabbad. "It might make good business sense, but it's bad for those who ride 650c bikes. Our best selling factory wheel in 650c is the Mavic Ksyrium Elite, which we sell for $579. But keep in mind, we maintain a large stock of Open Pro rims in 650c, and we can hand build a great wheelset for under $400."
Mirroring this is what goes on at Trisports.com in Tucson. "We stock the Ksyrium Elite exactly for that reason," said Trisports.com's Matthew Beauregard. "If there was a Mavic Aksium wheelset for 650s, we'd stock it in a heartbeat. We're going to investigate what's out there in 650c in this lower price point for the upcoming season. We sell our share of 650c tri bikes, and we want to make sure we're sensitive to the aftermarket demands of our customers. Of course, we can also hand-build a set of wheels for you, and we have Mavic hoops here for that very reason."
I've been saying these wheels are your "second set." In fact, if you do invest $400 or thereabouts in a wheelset like these mentioned above, they're almost certainly better than the OEM wheels that came on your tri bike. This is an area, like chains, cassettes, stems, tires, tubes and bottom brackets, where bike companies do their best to shave a buck or two here and there off the manufactured cost of the bike. OEM wheels are certainly okay in most cases, but they usually can't begin to compare with a set of nice $500 wheels that you got for $350.
