- Morning, Trainiacs.
Exciting stuff is inside this box, right. (exclaims)
I'm okay.
Now, in this box is a new rear Alto Wheel,
because this entire time
that I've had these here race wheels,
I've only had this disc wheel,
and that causes problems if I'm ever at a race
where this is all I've got,
and the wind picks up unexpectedly.
Because in that case, I'd be getting blown
all over the road.
So what we're gonna do today,
is we are actually going to test this disc wheel
versus this deep rear wheel, see how much
the difference is in speed, and whether it's worth it.
(energetic music)
Okay, so we're here at a pretty flat stretch of road,
and what we're gonna do is,
we're gonna do four separate rides.
We're gonna do eight minute sections,
and the first section of eight minutes,
I'm gonna do low power, kind of around 175
with this disc wheel.
Then, I'm going to turn around at four minutes
into that eight minute section, to make sure
that we're nullifying any elevation change or wind change.
So we're gonna go four minutes out, four minutes back,
all at that 175.
We're gonna do that again for another eight minutes,
but this time, at higher power, at 225 watts.
At that point, we're gonna come back here,
and we're gonna switch over to the deep section wheel
that isn't the disc.
We're gonna do the same thing, four minutes out,
four minutes back, at 175.
Do it again, four minutes out, four minutes back, at 225.
Now, one thing to keep in mind is,
we've got this set up so that it has the same rubber,
the same tire, the same tube inside both the disc wheel
and the deep section wheel.
So we're trying to make sure that everything
we possibly can analyze is the same.
Let's go do it.
(groovy music)
Should put a wrench on that.
It could be pretty critical.
Forgot the wrench to pop the cassette off,
but we can thank Urban Sprawl and the heating guys
for having one.
Now, we wanna make sure that we get everything
as similar as possible between the two wheels.
So I'm even gonna take the same cassette
from the disc wheel and move it onto the deep section wheel
so that even that is the same.
Got the same grease between the two.
(groovy music)
(grunts)
All right, so that's done.
We got those four sections done.
The easy ones were done at 176 watts,
and the hard sections were done at 225 watts.
Now, I don't really know how much difference there was.
I didn't notice a huge one, but let's get back
to the Pain Cavern and we'll compare the disc wheel
to the deep section wheel.
All right, Trainiacs.
That worked, that totally worked.
We have data here that matches exactly
what I was expecting, comparing the disc wheel
to the deep section wheel.
Now, I did this because there's a lot of people
that think like, if you want to be serious
about your tri bike, you have to upgrade to a disc wheel.
And what we've actually got here is proof
that there are times that a disc wheel is a penalty.
It'll actually cause you to bike slower.
So let me show you the data, here.
So remember what we did.
We did four different test sections,
where the first two were with the disc wheel,
going 175 watts and 225 watts.
The next were with the deep section wheel,
going 175 watts, 225 watts again.
Now, the reason that I did higher wattages
than I've done with, say, AEROBAR testing
on a road bike in the past, is because we know
that, well, we'll just cut to Cam Wurf saying it. (snaps)
- The other thing about a disc is,
it's really beneficial when you're going
at least above 40k an hour.
More like 45k an hour.
So, anything sort of less than that,
you really should just probably go with deep section rims.
- So, we know that a disc wheel isn't going to help you
until you start getting faster.
So that's why I increased the wattages.
But I have that 175 watts in there as like,
that's kind of, that would be like the really low end
of my Ironman pace.
Like, really, really low end.
Maybe towards the end of it if I was bonking.
So, for a lot of people, like say, the average cyclist,
that is going to be kind of a target wattage
that a lot of people will be going after.
So first, I wanted to look at that average wattage,
average power and speed that the average triathlete
is going to go with.
Does it make sense to upgrade to a disc wheel?
And what we found out is, we look at that lap,
where I have the disc wheel at 175 watts,
bang on, I hit it with normalized power,
I went 4.2 kilometers.
And then we skip forward here
to the next eight minute section with 175 watts,
where actually normalized power was 177,
so just barely like, marginally faster.
But in this case, I had the deep section wheels,
which are lighter, which are easier to handle in the wind,
and in this case, I actually went farther.
I went 4.47 kilometers instead of 4.2 kilometers.
Now, that is an actual penalty on the disc wheel
of over 6%.
Now let's take a look at what happens
when we increase the power to 225 watts.
And this would actually be beyond even
what I would do in an Ironman.
This is around what I would do for a Half Ironman.
So this is what a lot of people might target
for an Olympic or a sprint.
Like, still, we're talking quite, quite fast.
Faster than a lot of people would be going.
And in the case of the disc wheel,
averaging 226 watts, I went 4.95 kilometers.
Averaging with the deep section wheel, 224 kilometers,
I average less.
4.88 kilometers.
So in that case, there's actually a benefit
of about 1.5% to the disc wheel.
Now, why is this the case,
that the disc wheel is actually slower at slower speeds?
Well, that's the case because the disc wheel is heavier,
the disc wheel catches a lot more wind,
the disc wheel, thus, throws the bike side to side
a little bit more, so you're always just riding
a little bit longer than if you were going dead straight.
It's not until you get up to that 35+ kilometers per hour
that you really see a benefit to the disc wheel.
So this tells you that if you are the average person
that is doing a race that is going to average,
say, anything less than 40 kilometers an hour,
and you wanna save your money by not having a disc wheel
and then having to have multiple sets
of different depths of wheels, you can go
with just an average, deep section wheel.
I'd say an 80-mil, a 60-mil.
And if you're going less than 40 kilometers an hour,
you're actually going to be faster
than if you had that disc wheel.
So, this confirms what, pains me to say it,
Cam Wurf said in our course with him
where he taught the bike course
on protriathlontraining.com, and it confirms
what we say in the new Bike Foundations Beginner,
Bike Foundations booklet that we're creating
that isn't out yet.
Well, actually depending on when you look at this,
if you look at this immediately after the video
is published, it's not out yet,
but you can get a preview of it
at triathlontaren.com/beginnerbike,
where I discuss, what are the best bangs for your buck
at every single price point, at every single stage
in triathlon that you should be considering
upgrading your bike, along with the bike training
and how to create a training plan and all that.
So you can get a free preview of that,
regardless of when you look at this.
And then, hopefully around early fall,
that book is actually going to be out.
So go check that out, and don't stress
about feeling like you've gotta have a disc wheel,
Trainiacs.
Unless you're like, a total stud,
this makes me think that maybe for Challenge Roth,
I don't even bother with the disc wheel,
and that is perfectly, even at perfectly calm,
I'm not getting up to 40k an hour, tells me something.
All right, go check that out.
Triathlontaren.com/beginnerbike.
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Later, Trainiacs.