carpediemracing 

If I were going for the speed stuff I'd go with taller wheels - even with my emphasis on lighter weight I sought out tall wheels that came in at reasonable weights. I used to weigh almost as much as you and the pictures I have from that era I used TriSpokes/HED3s because aero. I tried to minimize accelerations because I couldn't and the heavier heavy aero wheels worked out well for that.

Without knowing anything about your riding other than what you said above I'd say a similar wheel set would be good, or a set of 80-90mm tall wheels. I figure you have normal non-aero wheels now so you can always fit one of those up front if it's windy.

I would get tubulars, to avoid the extra weight of the clincher stuff (tire/tube unit for a given durability, rim).

I'd also think about an aero helmet and doing something about kit (skinsuit or similar - some jerseys are so tight now, like a gift jersey from a race promoter that I wear on the trainer, a new cut from Verge).

Also, although this is all fun and stuff, talking about equipment, take an honest look at your position on the bike. I see guys with $10k bikes that, if you erased the bikes from under them, look like they're on a cruiser bike going for a cup of coffee. With a grimace on their face, of course.

YMCA

OP, if you can't win on crap equip, it won't matter much anyway

FBinNY 

Not quite. If the OP can place or show on crap, then better equipment might make the difference. It might even make a difference if he comes in 4th, but otherwise it'll just improve his ranking among the also rans.

YMCA

that was the point

FBinNY 

I was just sharpening it a bit.

YMCA

witty!

carpediemracing 

^ I appreciate the kind rebuttal. I count the guy above as a friend of mine, he's also a great bike community guy (he's marshaled Turn One at Bethel from 8 AM until the start of the P123 race), and he's one of my "secret" sources when I start thinking about aero and weight and such. He's quite frank with me and basically laughed off my aero frame thoughts (but he grudgingly admitted that a decent aero frame might be worth "what, maybe half a k an hour in a 70 kph sprint?").

He and I also went back and forth on wheel weight. He said that it's hard to capture the mathematics that I'm pointing out. He said that when he weighted his wheels (inner tubes full of water, which he discusses on his site somewhere) he used less energy. He suggested some experiments I could try so that I can measure delta power in my scenarios, things I could try to show in a controlled (single) blind experiment (because then I'd only need one friend to help me). I have a bunch of lead weight sitting in a box, thanks to him, along with two identical sets of clincher wheels - one will be weighted, one will not, I'll have two different bottles with weights in one so that the overall bike weight doesn't change, and both wheel sets have the same tires/tubes/rimstrips/skewers. I just haven't done any actual experiments, although I'd like to do something when the weather gets a bit better.

He's a much more powerful rider than me but he doesn't have the snap. His races tend to be much more steady in terms of speed (at higher speeds), and his style is also more steady. He's not jumping around as much, he's not in desperate straights for most of his races. I think that this has something to do with his findings. If he was struggling like mad to stay in, then trying to do well in the sprint, then maybe he'd think about things a bit differently.

The thing that does it for me is that I went against my instincts and paid a lot of money for my Jet 6/9. The cognitive dissonance should be going the other way, meaning I should be convinced that aero wheels rule all because I paid a ton of money (to me) for a new pair of Jets. However, after a dismal 3-4-5 weeks of races on the Jets, I basically stopped using them until the Bastognes needed maintenance, literally about 3+ years.

I haven't optimized my Jets so they wear heavier training tires (kevlar beads are the only thing "light" about them) but they're more than 3 pounds heavier than my Stinger 6s with the same hubs, same spokes, and virtually same cassettes (all steel cogs). They're a little less than 3 pounds heavier than my Stinger 7/9s, and the 7/9s have the newer carbon/alum hubs. However that 3 pound difference shouldn't matter. For me it does. When I first got them I eagerly went out truck hunting for drafts. I couldn't get the trucks because I couldn't accelerate up to speed at the same rate and I blew myself up accelerating (typically from 18-20 mph to maybe 40-45 mph, while trying to stay close enough to the passing truck that I get a draft - if I got too far off the back of the truck I'd get out of the best draft and then I wouldn't be able to get on). I found that I could get the draft much more easily when using the lighter Bastognes (which wear the same tires/etc), and therefore when I went out truck hunting I'd put those on my bike, not the Jets, even though they should be slower overall.

Ultimately I have no data to back up my thoughts because I stopped racing on the Jets before I really any solid data. I was getting shelled in 15-20 minutes every time I used them on Tues Nights, in the year I upgraded to Cat 2, so that meant I had little enough data as it was, and I was really discouraged from using them because I could try to place against the same guys when using the Stinger 6s. So I used the Stingers going forward, with the Bastognes a better alternative than the Jets.

I know the Jets are faster on steadier rides/events or solo, like in a TT. I totally agree with that. On my solo training rides the Jets are better than the Bastognes, and I was a bit shocked when I saw that coasting on the Jets down a particular hill netted me 0.5 mph more speed than sprinting my brains out + drafting others + tucking on the fastest sections down the same hill on the Bastognes (49.5 mph vs 49.0 mph respectively). But in a crit? No way.

I'd challenge you to do a crit (not a Prospect or some other circuit race, more like a Harlem etc) and try and use wheels where the rims/tires weigh 3 more pounds than your current set of wheels. Aero, not aero, it doesn't matter, although with aero wheels you could at least justify the extra weight. Just try it. Even though it's not supposed to matter, according to the math, I've found that the extra weight affects me. It's not that I can't accelerate that weight. It's that I can't accelerate it optimally to stay in the draft, and I end up using much more energy accelerating at the same rate as the jumpier lighter wheels.

aaronmcd

1% less weight will save less than 1% energy in parts of the race. (power used for acceleration = mass*acceleration*velocity, but that doesn't include power to overcome wind resistance)
Aero can save much more energy and does so for the entire race, not just accelerations.
I think as a bigger rider, and as a TT type rider, aero is worth than much more.

I personally have very un-aero wheels, but am in the market for a cheap aero front. Thinking off brand Chinese, or maybe a Flo wheel.

Doge

As several are qualifying their credentials - I am an expert, so you can take my post and move it to the top.
-Stiff - as many crits are just about following the pack - then sprinting. Stiffness is more important in a crit than a RR, and typically the road is more favorable for that.
-Wider - also stiffer and you can use wider tires (a tire is part of a wheel) at lower pressure and get better footprint and feel on corners.
-Aero - there is a compromise here. Weight vs. Aero. 50mm profile being about the best.

It is really really hard to beat our ex-sponsors (note EX - no reason to promote them) Mercury M5s. Also the current USA National Champion wheels, not that anyone pays attention.

Ygduf

I'm an expert and there is also a holiday inn express nearby.

aero.

shovelhd

I've won on Ksyriums. I've also lost close races on them. They're pretty poor aero wheels. I raced 404's last year. This year I'm going to use 606's.

chaadster

Thanks for the discussion, folks. It really seems like +50mm aero tubular is the way to go for me.

Question: are tubular rims going through the "wider is better" thing like clinchers are? It seems like many of the claimed benefits don't apply to tubies, but the rim/tire transition smoothing still holds, no?

FBinNY 

Back in the dark ages, many of the lightest rims were wider to better resist the alternating side to side pull of the spokes. But today's typical (heavier) rim are stiff enough that here's no issue there. As for tire width, they only come so wide (so far) and any rim will support them well enough.

shovelhd

See Hed.
See Zipp Firecrest.

Yep

Somebody please provide a link where "stiffness" has been shown to make a difference. Marketers love it but I would look for aero and then weight first.

I'm still mulling over what I think about racing on your less expensive wheels. I guess strictly speaking you have a greater chance to crash and break wheels, and if your goal is to just go faster on group rides with your spendy wheels, I don't know... Still seems silly.

TexMac

Like some friends i know, I use YOELEO 50mm carbons, 25mm width U-Shaped, 1400 grams light, durable, aero, good for drafting and best of all they cost...$400 per pair . I also use them for a 40 mile a daily commute, i never feel any sidewind compared to my zips and williams.

carpediemracing 

Wider gives you the bulbous shape that appears to be more aero. It may be that we're talking indistinguishable differences but I thought it significant enough to do a wholesale change to wide tubulars. I went all HED in 2010, getting two sets of training wheels (Bastognes, Jet 6/9) as well as Stinger 6s.

I came off of Reynolds DV46 clinchers and tubulars. The tubulars are under a teammate on "permanent loan", the clinchers under another. Because of the permanent loan thing he'd come to my rescue twice when I flatted my Stinger. Once was during a race and I had the opportunity to race the DV46 back to back to my Stinger. For whatever reason the DV46 felt like I had a slight brake rub. Both had my tires, my glue jobs, etc, and I'd raced the DV46 wheel for 4 full seasons.

After that I decided to stick with the wider bulbous rim shape.

Aerodynamically they work better with normal/narrow tires, like 21mm or something like that. I use 23mm because that's my compromise between narrow and going to 25mm or something wide like that.

Comfort, one of the main reasons to go wide on clinchers? No difference. Tire volume remains the same since the rim has nothing to do with it.

Also air pressure, you use what you used to use. You don't go lower unless you get a wider tire. Again, compared to a clincher, the tubular is a self contained unit. The tire reacts the same whether you've mounted it on a 21mm or 25mm rim.

Laterally you want a wheel that's stiff enough to not rub your brakes. A recent tech article I read said something like "give me a wheel that doesn't rub when the brake pads are 2mm away and that's enough for me" (said tech guy found that SRAM brakes work best with a max of 2mm clearance to the rim). I've heard enough rubbing carbon on steep, somewhat sandy hills to know that not everyone has their bike set up to meet those very broad guidelines.

For me, personally, I prefer a laterally stiff wheel. I've built/ridden/raced a number of different wheel sets, some with narrow hub flanges, some with wide, and I've hit various combinations where key variables remained the same (like spoke count/type and rim). At times I've sacrificed aero to use a laterally stiffer wheel (which was typically lighter than the aero wheel as well). In a hard jump, especially in a curve/corner situation, I like to have some predictability in the front end of the bike. A flexible front wheel really diminishes front end predictability.

I've built the same narrowly spaced low flange hub a couple times, hoping that a stiffer rim or heavier spokes would help make a wheel built around it feel better but each time I've tested it and pulled it apart. Beautiful but useless hub (old Mavic).

A good way to test the whole laterally stiff thing is to use the same wheel but loosen the spokes substantially for one set of jumps/sprint. I did this inadvertently with one wheel, where the spokes gradually loosened over time. At some point I started having problems with the wheel in sprints because it started feeling sort of mushy, unresponsive. I stopped using the wheel for a year, happened to take a look at it a few weeks back, and found that the spoke tension (factory built) was totally inconsistent with many spokes relatively loose. I essentially retensioned the wheel, it seems much better, and am waiting to see how it goes now.

Doge

I think so. Its more of a fad than it needs to be. Bigger tires are certainly preferred on rough roads. But they are heavier. On smooth roads its very hard to tell. Puppy (that is my racing kid) can't decide which he prefers on a smooth dry road and he has about every option to choose from.
I'm taking an very light 25mm FMB silk off today and putting a lighter 24mm Vittoria.

Doge

I don't know of any. I never needed a link having folded my own wheels in the old days. Lots of lab tests have wheels in a plane, and duplicating a sprint would be very hard in a lab. If you can ride your wheels in the same plane as your bike, without changing - I doubt stiffness, or weight matter that much. Just that that is not how the races end - esp. crits.

Upwards of 1,000W it is hard to keep the bike smooth. As crits are generally won on sprints with power way up there, riders are pulling up on their bars and exerting lots of forces sideways. A wheel that gives / flexes to this sideways force is taking that go forward energy away.
Just a few clips of my kid and other racers - you can see the side to side movement and *I think* its pretty easy to imagine a flexi wheel would rob some of that energy.
https://vimeo.com/117212534

chaadster

Thanks for the thoughts, all. I think I have a good idea of which way to go now, namely as tall and wide as I can afford!

Thanks again!