I got a set of Williams 85 clinchers last year and after putting them on I’ve never taken them off. I just got used to them and prefer them. They aren’t as much as Zipps so I’m not out as much if something happens. Also changing the break pads is a PITA on my SHIV.
Is this stupid of me to do? I only get to ride it once per week…all the other rides are on the trainer or stationary bike. The guy at Williams said it would be fine. Why not use them?
I use my enve 6.7 on my road bike every ride and I ride a Zipp FC 808 and 404 on my tri bike at all times.
I’m not sure how I would feel about them on the trainer though, but either way I say if you got them, use them.
sounds fine to me. I ride every day all over. The rainy salt road grime wears the brake surfaces out on my wheels pretty fast. I think there’s a lot of stop lights on my routes. For that reason I have multiple sets of wheels. I think your wheels will last a long time if you only ride out doors once a week. I don’t think the trainer imparts any substantial wear to the wheel. Tire is clearly a different matter.
do you ride the Williams on trainer? If so, you could obviously save wear on your race tires by switching to a stock rear wheel for the trainer . . . no need to change brake pads of course.
I hook up the FLOs with GP4000s for every outdoor ride–once a week like you–but then then Shimano stock wheels and steel skewer go back on before the new P2 returns to the KK.
smoke em if you got em
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If you put fresh race tires on for races, there isn’t much reason not to do this, especially if you aren’t putting big miles in on the bike, and are pretty light.
BUT, there are a few reasons:
For the last 3 years I’ve used the same rear wheel for training and racing, because it was my powertap wheel, and I had only one. I was putting big miles on it, and I’m not super light (175lbs). It held up fine for about 2 years with a ton of hard miles put on it then during stage 1 of a 3 stage bike race a spoke popped. The wheel performed fine during that criterium but then I had to go to a backup wheel for the TT and road race. So, no power. That sucked a little bit.
Fast forward another year later, couple days before my wife was doing a race we notice a noise from the wheel. Turns the hub had some bearings gone bad, AND the freewheel was chewed up really bad.
We got all of that fixed no problem in time, but it was a bit of stress.
Anyway, now we have two powertaps, one is just for races. I can leave the race tires and latex tubes on it. I don’t have to worry about race day being the day a spoke or bearing goes, and so on.
Since training wheels are so cheap, you might consider training on training wheels, racing on race wheels for the reasons above.
I haven’t ridden an Aluminum hoop in going on 8 years. My go to wheels for road and Tri is a pair of RZR 92s. As Ferris says “If you have the means I highly recommend picking some up.”
I’m 190 lbs and i ride in Detroit. Todays wheels are pretty robust so the notion of ‘race wheels’ seems pretty silly to me.
I ride the same wheels everyday. Granted my budget is considerably less than many on here so I ride Flashpoint 60’s. I do have a backup wheelset that came with my sweet 2008 QR Kilo, but I never use them. If I ever get to the point where I think it’s worth it for me to upgrade to something better, I’ll ride the new wheels every day too. For me it simply comes down to a time managment issue. I’m married with 2 kids who are also active in sports. So my training gets squeezed in when I’m not doing family related stuff. I don’t have the time to waste swapping out wheels, break pads, cassette’s and such. Watching my boys play lacrosse or sparring at karate is far more enjoyable to me than messing with bike tires.
If you can afford to replace em when you bust em, by all means ride your race wheels every time you ride.
If you can’t, doesn’t it make more sense to ride something like an Open Pro that you can replace easily?
…just make sure that you maintain em right too! Check bearings. Check FH bodies. Keep em cleaned and lubed.
M
I do too, but it is because I ride aluminum wheels (Rolf Prima, in particular).
cervelo r5 - zipp 303
cervelo r3 - reynolds assult sls
cervelo s2 - williams 58
cervelo p4 - hed3
i don’t ride non-race wheels. i tried this for a while but i literally had a garage of wheels. this took too much time. now i just get on the bike and ride.
I ride mine everyday. Hed Jet 6/9 PT on the Cervelo P3 and Zipp 101 PT on the Cervelo R5. Just put new tires at the start of race season.
If you ride a wheel only for races, you can make a safe bet that a race day will be the day your spoke will break. Granted that day maybe many years down the road, but I still maintain my point.
I ride 32 spoke box section wheels and like to head down the dirt roads and cow paths when I feel like it. I don’t take too much care in gluing my tires on just so and the tires themselves are often no prize. I would not trust them diving into a corner or for some race i spent a lot of money on, I have some better junk out in the garage with fresh tires
If you can afford to replace em when you bust em, by all means ride your race wheels every time you ride.
If you can’t, doesn’t it make more sense to ride something like an Open Pro that you can replace easily?
I would like to expand on this mentality. If you can’t afford to replace them, you shouldn’t be riding them. And if you aren’t riding them because you can’t afford to replace them, you shouldn’t have bought them in the first place. Owning an expensive set of deep carbon wheels and only pulling them out for a handful of races every year just doesn’t make sense to me.
I am with Jackmott… I used to do that too, but a couple of times, I had a problem with a race wheel just a few days before an “A” race, putting stress on me to find an alternative in time.
Learned from that and now I keep my race wheel set aside, it does not wear down, always ready to go reliably with very little tire wear. I install them for one ride before each race, to make sure everything is good to go.
I guess it depends on the conditions of the roads in your area too. Roads are pretty messed up around here, so more chances of getting wheel troubles.
I leave my HED 3’s on my tri bike . The rear is a HED 3 deep. I like the way it looks and hate to change wheels . I ride my tri bike 1-2 times during season May-Sept. I ride my road bike much more. I have bontragger aura 5 on it.
I am glad to see the reactions on this thread and that more people do it. Sweet wheels are for riding. That’s why you get them.
They used to call people stupid for riding anything other than “training wheels” a little as two years back on this same forum.
But you are not, ride on…ride on on your sweet wheels.
No, it is still stupid to train on race wheels. Unless you have two sets of race wheels.
Eventually you may do enough training and racing to see the light =)
I am glad to see the reactions on this thread and that more people do it. Sweet wheels are for riding. That’s why you get them.
They used to call people stupid for riding anything other than “training wheels” a little as two years back on this same forum.
But you are not, ride on…ride on on your sweet wheels.
No, it is still stupid to train on race wheels. Unless you have two sets of race wheels.
Eventually you may do enough training and racing to see the light =)
and…there you go. It is still stupid to ride on race wheels haha.
there is a light to be seen.
Basically you need to get another set of wheels and start calling those your race wheels. Then start calling the race wheels you were riding before, training wheels. This automatically makes them training wheels.
It is not ok to ride race wheels while having money to go to the store and buy an extra set, you have to already get the second one so the first one can be the second one and this second one can become the first one.
Its not different because something changed, it’s different because nothing changed.