A few weeks ago I did a Triathlon that had a 500m downhill at about 12% followed immediately by a 140° right turn. I got up to 80km/h on the short downhill without hard pedalling. If it had been wet, I wouldn't have wanted to do that course.

Wider wheels are also possible with disc brakes.

It's funny, of all of the recent advances in road bikes - tubeless, 1x, electronic shifting and disc brakes, disc brakes are the only one I would want at all!

i don't need a new bike, certainly ain't in this price category, but I can appreciate that when I pay a #$#@$ pile of money, I get a bike that looks like its worth it.
these disc capiper shrouds look tech.





seeing hydro cables on cool new bikes seems low tech (FTR, I covet this bike)
$0.02

Not everybody can train on their Tri bike. I live in CO. The only place near me that is pancake flat is a multi-use bike path and a ~2 mile stretch of a state park where I do workouts at. Otherwise, my "flat" rides have over 700' of elevation gain, with an average ride of 1400-1800'. Some of my longer rides have well over 3k in elevation gain.

Only 1 ride of mine per week is on my Tri bike -- my workout day where I do a number of 4-mile out and back intervals on that state park road. The rest of my rides are on my road bike. Climbing on a Tri bike sucks. Overall cycling fitness is similar between your Tri and Road bikes. Pushing 220W for 30 minutes up a mountain at 11MPH and 90RPM is going to be a similar effort to pushing 220W for 30 minutes at 90RPM on a long flat stretch of road at 23MPH.

Also, it's going to be location dependent. Back in IL, quite a few triathletes I know only had a Tri bike. Or a Tri bike and a beater road bike. So it's no wonder they're going to spend the most time training on a Tri bike, because it's their best/only bike. At the same time, I look back to some of my rides in IL and I'm only at 100-200' of elevation gain over 20-30 miles.

Of the 5 triathletes I'm personally friends with here in CO, 4 have nice road bikes in addition to their Tri bike, and one just uses their road bike with clip-ons for races.

As far as the bike in question - no doubt it's nice. But it's not necessarily worth spending the $$$$ on this just to get disc brakes.

I've got an "old P3C" from 2011.

You're right my next bike could have disc brakes when I change..........in about 10 years time or when it's proven such bikes are faster.

Happy to use my shitty old rim brakes in any TT or triathlon at the moment.

Confirmed, did an Olympic this year and it started pouring 3 miles into the bike leg. Came steaming into a somewhat unexpected 120 degree turn and had a pucker factor 1000 moment when the brakes did nothing for a solid 5 seconds- I was clipped out and ready for emergency maneuvers when the brakes finally started to work well enough to slow down. After that and another wet bike leg later in the year, I would be happy to jump to disc braking- especially if Shimano make a proper DI2 bullhorn hydro-brake/shifter. My dream would be a SpeedConcept with ISOSpeed in the rear, discs, thru-axels, and a "don't give a crap about the UCI box" version.

But I am a disc best case scenario- technical, hilly, fast courses, I use full carbon wheels, race in the wet, and go full tilt on the bike to make my placings.

Take a few of those away, and a current gen Speedconcept would be all I ever need.

Shimano has a Di2 hydro disc brake lever.

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Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/

Damn, you're right!

https://bike.shimano.com/...-di2/ST-R9180-R.html

This is bad for my budget.

i'll tell you exactly what's going to happen.

within 10 years, basically everything will be discs and electronic shifting.

then, some bold company will release a 'climbing' version of their aero road bike for some premier pro tour rider at a hilly road race or mountain stage. it will be the same bike, but with rim brakes and mech shifting - same aerodynamics, a half-pound lighter.

then, everyone will start talking about needing a 'climbing' bike, and convincing themselves that their training and racing rides are 'pretty hilly,' and then everyone will want to get the new rim brakes and mech shifting just so that they can get neutral support, and saving weight's pretty important, and etc. except now mech and rim brakes will be more expensive that discs and electro.

and a few holdouts will come onto slowtwitch and say, "now's a great time to make a killing on second-hand rim-brake wheelsets!

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https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

The easiest, and most effective one of those to take away is the full carbon wheels. Pick up a set of Hed Jet Blacks to replace whatever wheels you use now, sell the old wheels to reduce the incremental cost...and never look back.

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http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/

To contrast you, I rode 15 hours last week, with 14 of them on the tri bike. On two of the rides on the tri bike, I had pissing rain for 3 hours (was very glad to have hydraulic brakes) and each had over 6k of climbing. To say elevation limits one's riding to only a tri bike is just wrong.

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"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." T.S. Elliot | Cycle2Tri.com
Sponsors: SciCon | | Every Man Jack

Won't happen. This disc brake train is not turning around.

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Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/

Horseshit. https://rappstar.com/...es-need-a-road-bike/

Not a chance. I just upgraded my 2012 BMC TM01 this year. Put in a new cockpit, went from 10 to 11 speed, and from mechanical to electronic shifting SRAM Red. As long as I don't crack the frame, that will take that bike another 6+ years.

Good for you, I guess?

I'm not saying there aren't outliers or people in CO who only own a tri bike. Perhaps if you have DI2 on the brake levers things are different, but for the majority who have mechanical shifting, a Tri bike is not a great climbing bike, given the need for frequent switching of gears out of aero, and trying to climb in aero at 10-12MPH (or slower if a super steep climb) is pretty unstable and you can't pull against the aerobars nearly as well as you can on shift levers on a road bike. It's like trying to take Prius on backcountry trail roads. It might make it, but it's not the best tool for the job. Not to mention a lot of local group rides won't allow tri-bikes for safety reasons.

Again, bike fitness is transferable. As long as you're comfortable on your tri bike and have done enough practice rides, it's not as if training on your road bike is going to take away from your Tri bike fitness. Look at the UCI world championship TT. The top guys are almost always top tier Tour guys who... you guessed it, spend most of their time training on road bikes. Looking down on someone because they train a bulk of their miles on a road bike is pretty stupid in my opinion, assuming they have a well-fitting Tri bike and do ride on occasion to get a comfortable position. If it's good enough for the pros, it's good enough for the rest of the people.

The braking is a little better on these hybrid wheels but not enough to drop another $1.5-2k on. The poor cable routing and compromised brakes on most TT bikes means you're starting with two strikes. At this point I am holding fast to my current Aoelus TLR 9's until next race season and I will look at the landscape then.

And discs have completely taken over every segment but TT bikes, so dumping more money into a non-disc, non-thru axel wheelset at this point isn't for me.

Note- I like road tubeless on everything as well, so I may be biased towards new shiny stuff. . .

Kind of an apples and oranges comparison really. I really doubt the UCI TTT champs ran a marathon after their 50min ride...

Specificity is on of the keys to success/winning at a discipline.

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"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." T.S. Elliot | Cycle2Tri.com
Sponsors: SciCon | | Every Man Jack

Maybe. Maybe not. I'm not saying go elliptical instead of go for a ride. The best cyclists in the world are going to be the best whether they ride a TT bike or a road bike. If someone prefers training on one over the other, it's not going to make them incapable of riding fast on the other.

The original comment I was replying to was claiming someone must "must not do long distance triathlons very quickly then" and "because that is the best way to develop positional fitness required to be competitive"

which is straight up incorrect. You can be very quick and competitive even if you do the bulk of your training on a road bike. Will you be winning Kona? Maybe not. But there's no reason why you can't compete well and continue to improve training on two different bikes.

Also, everyone also does tris for different reasons. For me, I got burnt out of running. I ran a 2:33 marathon in 2013 and haven't gotten close since. I've accepted I'm never going to PR in the marathon again. The best thing about cycling for me is being able to see new places that I'd never see on my runs. If I wanted to be specific, I'd just ride the same boring flat ride over and over at fast speeds to practice racing. But that would ruin it for me. I passed plenty of people with $4000+ tri bikes this weekend on my lowly aluminum tri bike. Would I have passed a few more had I exclusively trained on my Tri bike? Maybe. But I'd also probably not be as motivated to get out for a ride if I wasn't going exploring mountain roads.

This. I don't even have a working rear brake, just an Omega X on the front with Koolstop Salmon pads and a Jet 9 Black. To be honest I wish I had bought the standard Jet+ as I find the front brake is way too strong.

Your takeaway: "I need to brake sooner in rainy conditions"

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"Go yell at an M&M"

I suppose "being competitive" is a relative term

+1. The argument for disc brakes on TT bikes should be different than that for road bikes. Braking with rim brakes and an aluminum brake track is plenty good enough for a TT bike. For TT bikes it should be all about aero - if you can design a bike with disc brakes to be more aero than one with rim brakes, bring it on. Otherwise, don't waste our time and money.

All manufacturers are claiming their bikes are more aero with disc brakes. If you care to dispute it, go and buy them all and take them to a wind tunnel to test.

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Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/

it appears at certain yaws they are.. and certain others they are not.. Probably a wash in the end.

Imagine that - as aero or better than the previous generation with better brakes

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Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/

I skimmed the BMC materials and couldn't find that claim. Is it in there somewhere?