mates,
i’m heading out for malibu to do the nautica sprint in september. query; the bike course is right along the beach, which means it gets pelted with a steady and forceful crosswind. what’s your opinion of using the hed 3 on the front?
cheers,
sv-
the bigger the wind the faster you go. I’ve used a disc in back and atrispoke in front in 20mph crosswinds and didn’t notice being blown around too much.
My thoughts are people make a bigger deal about handling problems than they actually encounter.
The majority of the sprints and Oly’s in Melbourne are held along Beach Road, and it can get awful windy there (usually a strong headwind, but can get gusty as the wind whips up between the beach front apartment blocks. Last year for the State Champ’s I used a HED CX front and HED Disc rear and had no real handling issues to speak of.
I was faster than I would have been using non-aero wheels. This is a good thing.
Get involved.
I did a TT in Richland, WA, a long time ago, using Specialized TriSpokes front and rear. Pretty constant side wind (and pretty stiff), but the course rolled a bit, and ducked behind berms occasionally. At most, my line varied by about 15 inches coming out from behind the berms. Of course, this was a TT, not a tri, so more of a crowd could be an issue. I weighed 145 at the time.
thanks to all who replied; i’ll stay with the H3.
sv-
I’m 5’9", 165 and I’ve only had one race in the 10 years I owned Tri-spokes that I should have rethought. Of course the smart move would have been to skip the TT altogether. The wind was 35-40mph steady, gusting to about 60. Because of that race I always take a standard front wheel to a race in addition to the aero wheels just in case Momma Nature decides to be really mean. I’d race the H3s in just about any weather conditions you could encounter. I’ve raced them in plenty of 20mph steady or gusting winds without incident. They’re just plain fast. And few places on earth have steady diets of winds like those above. Even few of those have rideable roads.