Originally Posted by Jinker

Nice.

How about some facts?

Any wheel, from the roughest, toughest 40 spoker to a featherweight 16 spoke aero TT wheel is INCREDIBLY stiff vertically. Short of spoke failure, the amount of vertical compliance present in any wheelset is miniscule compared to the difference in dropping or raising your tire pressures by 5psi. Steel spokes just don't stretch that much (lengthwise) before they snap.

Lateral stiffness (or rather the lack thereof) may be noticeable when out of the saddle, swinging the bike side to side.

In terms of weight, when rolling on flat ground, an extra pound or two on the wheels is essentially meaningless.

In acceleration, the LARGEST possible contribution wheel weight makes (if the entire difference in wheel mass is at the outer edge of the rim) is twice as large as any other part of the bike. If your stoker gains 5 pounds over a season, it'll make a bigger difference.

In climbing, a pound on the bike (or riders) is a pound. It's strictly power to weight.

We've come to aero drag.

From everything I've read, going from a regular spoked wheel to the most aero bladed spoked wheels makes less of a difference in a TT than wearing a rough set of gloves on some TT bars, and far less drag than a regular bike helmet vs. an aero helmet. Over 80% of the aero drag on a bike is from the rider. Of the rest of the aero drag, a huge amount is from the frame and tires themselves. It just doesn't leave a lot of drag for the wheels.

Yeah, it'll make a measurable, repeatable difference in a TT, but can you really FEEL a 30 second difference over 40 kilometers?