Originally Posted by
no_ster
I was on the market for a new road bike and the shop that I can get good discounts at is Trek exclusive. The Emonda SL6 Pro was the bike I was initially looking at, but I noticed that the Boone RSL is the same price and only weighs about 1 lb more. I have always loved CX bikes, in my opinion they're super fun to ride on dirt and I love to see roadies get mad when I pass them on one. When looking closely at the spec of the Boone, I noticed that the ultra-light Bont. Paradigm wheels are road specific wheels, which was somewhat surprising to me. Indeed Sven Nys rides with carbon road wheels on his CX bike, but to me they seem too fragile to be ridden off road on bumpy dirt-roads and trails for the amateur rider who has to pay for their wheels when they bend or crack.
If I were to buy the Boone I would probably get another set of wheels so I could have one set for CX and one for pavement. Considering the Boone's stock wheels are for road, I would probably get another stronger set for trails. What do you think of this? I have bent XC mountain bike wheels in ruts and rolling over bumps, so I would not trust road wheels over similar terrain. Considering the Boone's Paradigm wheels weight basically as much as the Emonda SL6 Pro's Vision Metron M40 carbon wheels, why does the Boone weigh a pound more anyway? Is there a pound more carbon in the frame set? They have basically the same components.
Most people at my local CX series are running road wheels. The top choice seems to be Zipp 303 tubulars, but I see a lot of HED Ardennes and others. The only real CX-specific wheelset I see a lot of is Psimet, which has a wider carbon wheelset designed specifically for holding CX tubular tires better to the (glued) rim.
I personally use Psimet A100 tubular road wheels for CX racing, and use Shimano Ultegra 6800's with CX tires for training, race-day backup and fall/winter riding. The rest of the time I run 25mm road tires on the Ultegras. Both sets have held up fine.
I think MTB wheels likely take a lot more abuse than CX. For starters, the suspension travel of MTB bikes means you're more likely to bomb over ruts, rocks and roots at speed which potentially would damage wheels. You can't really do that on a rigid CX bike. Most CX courses are a combination of grass, sand, mud and gravel and anything more technical means you're hopping off and shouldering the bike. The wheel damage I see at CX races is usually the result of crashes or hitting barriers while trying to bunny hop, and I'm sure this type of thing would damage MTB or CX-specific wheels as well.
For the most part, I think the stresses on a wheel with a 23-25mm tire at 100psi hitting bumps and potholes at 25mph is going to be the same or worse than you'd find with a 33mm CX tire at 25psi riding in grass, sand, mud, gravel, etc at 10-15mph.
So, yeah... in short, I wouldn't worry about the Bontrager wheels being too fragile unless you're riding a lot of rough singletrack. As others have said, having two wheelsets is nice just so you don't have to swap tires.