Sunday I determined that Monday evening would be an assault on the mountain. What that means is there would be an all out effort to reach the top in under 12 minutes. If you’ve read LowCadence.com for any amount of time, you are familiar with this Don Quixote effort undertaken by yours truly numerous times in the past. This time I had a new weapon.
Since I was out of town for the weekend, I left my bike at Sunshine. So I sent John a text asking him if the test wheels they had were available and if I could use them for my attempt. He responded that they were available. He also let me know that my replacement shifter was in. Now I should be all set for the climb.
The wheels are Shimano’s RS Eighty carbon/alloy. This would be my first ride on carbon wheels. It was my hope that the wheels would either 1) actually help me go faster up the mountain, or 2) make me think I could go faster up the mountain. Supposedly the light wheels should spin faster and give me an edge.
I started off and immediately got caught in a downpour. The rain continued until I was a quarter of the way up the State Park side of the mountain. At least I felt a bit cooler – even if a bit soggy.
The wheels were okay. There did seem to be a difference between them and my normal training wheels – a set of Ksyrium Elites. It is true that the wheels seemed to “spin up” more quickly. They also seemed stiff enough and the ride was smooth.
My only negative was that the rear hub was making annoying noise. Of course, this being a test set that had been ridden before, I figured there might be some wear. However, it did make me wonder about the longevity of the construction.
Soon I was over the top and starting down the Furman side. That is when I really noticed a difference with the wheels… and it scared me!
I’m not sure if I am describing this correctly, but when descending the wheels made me feel top heavy. They were definitely faster than my Mavic wheels. Several times I felt as though the bike was running away from me and going into the turns I didn’t feel the same level of control.
Now, I’m not saying that is a bad thing. It is just different. It was something I had to adjust to. Frankly, I was surprised, because I was counting on the wheels making a difference on the climb — not the descent.
Then it was time to turn around and start back to the top. I set my Garmin to read from the Quarq CinQo only the Average Watts, Current Watts, and Average Speed. I knew I would need to average somewhere near 330 watts to make my goal.
Click picture to enlarge.
As you can see from the graph, the first two-thirds of the climb I was able to keep the wattage up. The places where it dipped during that period were spots where the road leveled out a bit and I was spinning at a higher cadence, but still getting more speed.
Where things went south was in that last third of the climb. I had lost my ability to accelerate and settled into a steady output. I was still averaging over 300 watts during this section, but it was still pulling down my overall average. Of course, I wasn’t really paying attention to the computer at this point.
You can see that I gave it a bigger effort as I hit The Wall. In that 700 feet section, I climbed over 70 feet in elevation with an average of a 10% grade. At the very end it kicks up to a 16% grade. It took 52 seconds to cover that 700 feet.
My new wheels and the hope that they would help carry the day came up 18 seconds short. That puts me right up there with my best times (best time so far is 12:05 with many other attempts landing in the 12:15 range). If I compare my times on my best wheels (Ksyrium SLs), then the carbon Shimano wheels would come in about even.
I think I’ll stick with my Mavic wheels. The RS Eighty wheel set looks nice. The wheels ride nice. However, I don’t think they really made me any faster than I go on my SLs. Plus, the Ksyriums feel a little more stable to me. Perhaps it is just the comfort of the known, but going into a turn on a fast descent I’d prefer the feel of my wheels. On the climbs? I really did not notice that much of a difference between the Eighties and the SLs.
