Need a sanity check of sorts, and am sure that my fellow STers won’t hold back.
As I’ve stated in some of my earlier posts, I’m a noob, this being my first year of triathlon. For my last event - a sprint - I averaged 22mph for the bike leg while on my road bike with shorty bars… but have recently purchased a P2 and am now considering a set of aero wheels (probably something along the lines of a HED Jet6 set or Jet6/Jet9 combo)
For the remainder of this year, I’m looking only at sprint distance events while I continue to work on my swim (I am pretty freakin’ slow in the water but am working with a coach to change that). My question is - and I realize that I’m asking for a HUGE generalization with this - am I better off riding on the stock wheelset and passing on the race wheels until I am looking at longer race distances, or is there enough benefit to be had with the aero wheels over a +/- 20K bike leg to make it worthwhile to go ahead and incur the additional expense?
In other words, I’ve already spent the cash on the bike - should I also go ahead and go for the wheelset, or is that a completely frivolous expense so long as my swim is dead slow? With a slow swim, I want all the speed I can easily find elsewhere, but at the same time I don’t want to throw money into wheels if I’m looking at a tiny return on investment at the distances I’m looking at.
I asked a really good swimmer who is also a prgamatist what one tip he would give me to go faster in the sport. he asked some good questions about my racing, thought for second and simply said, “You need more time in the pool.”
I would approach the question differently… I think that you would definitely appreciate the benefits from race wheels, whether you’re finishing first or last… they benefit everyone that uses them. BUT, I would wait until maybe your second season for two reasons… first, wait until you have a season under your belt and be sure that this is what you want to sink your time and money into. But secondly, I think a season of racing on your stock equipment is really good for getting an intimate understanding of what your baseline is, and how hard you can push yourself.
I don’t know if that makes any sense at all, I may not be explaining myself all that clearly.
To answer your last part of the question, if you’re slower on the swim I think it’s a VERY good idea to maximize your gains in the other disciplines until you can improve the swim, so yeah race wheels would be great for that.
I ride a P2SL with an open pro/powertap rear and a cheap stock shimano front wheel. I’ve done 2 halfs and an oly so far this year and have IMC coming up at the end of august. I’m not going to change anything about my bike setup between now and then and I’ve been very happy with my bike splits and overall finishes up to this point in the season.
Basically, from my perspective, you’re completely and utterly insane. I did my first tri on a Trek 1200 with no aerobars and put up what I still think was a totally respectable bike split.
You’ll get all sorts of answers from the side of ST who think that any expenditure on aero geek equipment is totally justified, even if it only gets you an extra quarter of a second over a 20K TT. There are definitely people on here who think it’s worth it to buy a P4 with 808’s for a super sprint.
If you’re really serious about the sport, save your money and get a swim coach. Unless you’re a fish - in which case just save your money full stop.
Agreed, Tom, and am doing all I can to do that. Sometimes I think maybe too much so (then I come to my senses)
It’s very obvious that the swim is my weak link - this last event I
was 29th of 32 after the swim but had crawled up to 17th after the bike
(20k) even with a slowish T1… certainly leaves no mystery as to where the gains can be had
“Sprint” doesn’t really tell us the bike distances you’re racing. And, we don’t know what “stock wheelset” you have. But, ulitmately, it’s up to you to decide if saving ~1 minute is worth the price of the wheels/tires/tubes.
dont ever make a financially unwise move just to go a little faster in a hobby.
if you have money to burn, burn it.
if not, you dont need it.
Good advice, to be certain. I can afford it, I suppose, but certainly don’t want to spend for no (or precious little) benefit. Wouldn’t even be considering it if I wasn’t already working on/making progress on the swim.
The functionality of a fast wheelset and your ability to swim are not correlated, or they are very weakly. You “sucking” as a swimmer isn’t going to make the wheels any better or worse.
In other words–smoke’m if you got’em.
That said, the wheels may be a good milestone “reward” for improving materially on the swim. It’s kinda nice to have those internal challenges to help you get faster.
Get the Jet6 for up front and a Renn disk in back. On eBay or ST Classifieds you can get this set for about $700. Race wheels are worth about 1min. to you in a sprint and they are “free speed.” (well $700 speed, but you don’t need to do anything but bolt them on raceday).
