I am currently riding on a set of $400 Superteam rim brake wheels (58/88), and will be doing the Nice Ironman next year.
These are the only wheels I’ve ever rode on, so I have nothing to compare them to. My understanding is that they’re pretty bottom of the line and are not ideal for breaking.
Since Nice is a hilly (mountainous?) bike course with very steep descents, I want to ensure that I have the best setup possible with my wheelset and cassette/chainrings. I believe that I am currently riding with a 52/34 chainring, but might be wrong about that.
Thoughts on upgrading to a different, higher end rim brake wheelset and a different chainring?
A bunch of ppl asked me similar questions as I raced mid pack in Nice so this is my view, I’m 50yra old and my bike split was 6.09 which was about 600th/2000 so maybe u have some idea of my intermediate type level. Ftp 280 rode z2 almost all day as I saved it more for the run, I rode the ascents around 220w avg and tried to push power on the descents even though I don’t have great bike handling, made up a lot of places descending though as I rode a 55/42 11-34 which was fine in almost every up section other than km 11 for 2km and a couple of 500m long spots later on, the ascending isn’t steep just long and I normally don’t ride super high cadence. I did however put time into guys riding 50 34 type smaller compact rings and the road bike ppl from km 65-110 and most of the descents as they topped out spinning. I ran a hed alloy rim front 55mm jet5 and a roval 321 disk at the back since I came straight from Lahti, if I did it again I’d probably go marginally smaller to run a 39 small ring and probably go for a lighter wheel at the back. I run tririg brakes they are pretty good and I don’t sit on the brakes too much just flow through the course more
Depending on your power going up I’d go with a bigger outer ring that u can handle so u can power on the descending and rolling, and plenty of range on the cassette to change down to hold your preferred cadence in km 35-60 then 110-125.
These are quite long sustained climbs so u can’t be grinding too much if u aren’t a grinder, u can’t rest as its constantly up. U so need the ability to ride decently fast in the rolling and descending parts as you will be pedalling most of the time to get back to speed not freewheeling it.
For wheel your main question it isn’t super technical sitting on brakes non stop but u do need stopping power I’d really consider a set of Hed or older giant slr 1 with the alloy rims they are light aero and brake super well, I wouldn’t run a disk probably. Jet 5 jet 6 both quite OK, try to keep the bike light. I run latex tubes, u want lower tire pressures and 28mm tires probably better than 25s.
Bottle cages need to be decent also and preride the course especially km 11-62 km 110-165 which is most of the climb and steeper descent, u can cut across to do this or better still ride the entire course 170km skipping the out and back as it is a lot more up and down than I expected, the best descent is km100-110 then there is a fairly decent climb before the main descent into nice where there are lots of judder bars, bends, shade and little towns. Knowledge helps.