Murphy'sLaw wrote:
Dev,
Hydraulic brakes may be "new" on road/tri bikes, but the basic technology for hydraulic brakes on bikes has been around for a LOOOONG time now.
My wife has Magura hydraulic rim brakes on her old '96 ProFlex Beast mtb, and they still work well.
(the XTR disk brakes on my new mtb are insanely good. Literally 1-finger braking, w/ oodles of stopping power. It feels like cheating.)
The Magura hydraulic brakes on my P5 are AMAZEBALLS.
Granted, it's only n=1, but I've had zero issues whatsoever with them to date.
I can certainly see how having regular brakes is 'better' for travelling, just in case there's any issues, since replacement parts are readily available almost everywhere. Also agree about DI2 - seeing people stuck on the side of the road because
their bike won't shift at all, is a dealbreaker on that.
At least if cable shifting goes south, there are lots of ways to MacGuyver a fix to at least get you back home.
And get replacement parts to fix it easily and cheaply.
Yeah, it's mainly the part in bold. My "use case" is not totally the same as most age groupers given my race schedule. But my race schedule is the delta between my VW Jetta and the Audi A6 that I chose not to get...would rather give my money to Airlines, hotels, WTC and Cervelo :-)