Silence Is Golden

This has been an unprecedented quiet spell for the November blog.  We haven't been completely silent, as we've been oversharing with the world in the newsletter and on our Facebook page, but inasmuch as we can ever be described as "deep," those venues don't exactly show off that side of us. 

So why so quiet?  Well, there's a lot going on.  The Rail pre-order is steamrolling along until Friday, and we are continually working with the five and change pre-production sets we've got on hand. We're getting closer to announcing our next frame, making sure everything's taken care of with our European Rail partner, and starting a research project that we can't even believe we somehow got ourselves into.  Plus, if you didn't notice it's the heart of racing season, so I've been busy getting throttled in my first season of mountain biking as a Cat 1 (it's a rapid and hostile environment, but when I don't flat I'm doing just fine, thanks).  The focus shifts to road this weekend, although the course and weather forecast seem to indicate that the transition won't be a clean one - there will be mud. 

The majority of my time has been spent getting pre-production Rails built up, tuning up our wheelbuilding team, and making sure every last detail on the Rail is as it should be.  Since I don't personally have the capacity to build all of the Rails that we're selling (at least if people want to use them this year), we've been developing a small team of builders.  I'm very excited with where we stand on this, from a production point of view but primarily from a quality perspective.  Each wheel built of course goes through my stand and I do my worst to it to ensure it's exactly where I want it, and in that process it becomes very evident whether the builder really cared about the build.  Building skills I can teach, commitment I can't. 

It's been windy lately around here, usually windy enough that you instinctively question whether a 50mm deep rim is the sane choice.  What each and every person who's ridden on a Rail has mentioned as a first impression is how calm they are in wind.  People are freaked out about it, to be blunt.  We knew they'd be good in this regard, we just didn't know how good. 

After some initial head scratching I think the braking performance is officially where we'd aimed for it to be, at least.  I'll admit, until we learned the ideal set up we heard some squeals that would have made a fire truck take notice, but we've got that sorted out now.  Actually coming to a stop was never an issue, it was just how many hundreds of people knew about it.  Now that answer is "no hundreds." (my relief at figuring out the brake issue is a nice double meaning for the title of this post)

Stiffness.  Umm.  These are stiff.  Yes sir.  They track corners exceptionally well, and they absolutely laugh at the though of my meager (although a lot less meager than it used to be, strangely enough - am I seeing an early rush of old man power??) sprints knocking them out of plane.  Quite stiff. 

In the next couple of weeks we'll be sending some wheels out on an impromptu road show to get more complete third party impressions of them, but at this point we feel like we've got the whole nut very very dialed in.  Full steam ahead. 

Riding the Rail

Building a wheel you've never built before is a small challenge, from sizing the spokes to making sure there's nothing inherently weird about the way the wheel comes together, but the pre-production Rail front went together easily.  Friday evening was finally the chance to ride the thing. 

Tire of choice was a Vittoria Corsa Evo CX, for the primary reason that I'm exceptionally familiar with the tire and wouldn't get any noise from it.  The reason I'm so familiar with it is that it's a tire I really really like.  Normal butyl tube with an 80mm stem.  I used my Wheelhouse, which after two and a half years couldn't be more of a known quantity. 

Time was a bit short since I still had a ton of stuff to do to get ready for the 13 hour mountain bike relay race we were doing on Saturday, fortunately I have a loop nearby where I can quickly get the measure of how a wheel generally behaves.  Doing my opener ride as part of this deal would kill two birds with one stone.  What I learned was that it seemed to handle very very well, seemed stiff, didn't show any weird behavior at all, and it made me excited to race it on Sunday. 

Before Sunday's race there was this small matter of doing nearly 5 hours of singletrack at pop your eyes out (literally - two of us blew out contact lenses) pace.   Consider doing 7 cyclocross races in a day, that's roughly what Saturday was - one heck of an opener workout. 

Off the front about halfway through. Front wheel is a Rail 52, rear is a wide 50 that we've been using as a construction test while waiting for the Rail mold to get up and running.  Picture credit to Daniel Meaurio.

Cursing Mike for telling the internet that I was racing on Sunday, I lined up for the 1/2/3 race at Carl Dolan on Sunday.  Dolan is kind of an egg shaped course, about 2 miles long, with one really fast tight downhill right hand turn and an uphill finish.  A gusty wind had me thinking "oh crap, maybe I should have brought a shallow front wheel?"  An ambulance on the course delaying our start had me thinking "maybe this skinny tire racing isn't all it's cracked up to be?"  I'm always jumpy before the race starts and then settle down as soon as we get going, which we did soon enough. 

I'm very pleased with how the wheel worked.  There was enough wind that it was a top of mind thing at all times in how you positioned yourself, but never once was there the remotest amount of steering feedback from the wheel getting blown around.  I can't say that this wouldn't have been the case with other wheels, but it wasn't with the Rail.  Not the most technically demanding course in the world but the one real turn there is is a tricky one.  I was able to find a sneaky and tight inside line that no one else was using, which helped me to save a lot of hard pedal strokes every time I used it (you couldn't always get to it safely from where you were in the pack). With about a bazillion and six hard corners in my back pocket from Saturday, I might just have been sharp at cornering, but that was the line I wanted and the wheel sure seemed to like it as much as I did. 

At one point I jumped off the front of the field headed toward a break up the road.  A couple of guys bridged to me and we got a huge chunk of the way across, but teammates of guys in the break came and sat on us and then the field decided they wanted the whole thing back anyhow.  All I can say is that the bike felt fast and I was riding with guys who are way stronger than I am.

It may sound like I'm damning the wheel with faint praise, which obviously I'm not trying to do.  Quite the contrary, I pretty much don't ever want to use any other wheels anymore ever.  I loved it.  But absent something that has a baseline chance of 0% (like me winning that race) coming to pass, it's hard to say too much about what the wheel did or didn't do.  I loved riding it and you'll pry it out of my cold dead hands. 

"Talk Me Into A Pair..."

Is a dangerous thing to say to someone who sells wheels!  Nonetheless, we got exactly that request yesterday.  It was in regard to buying some of the RFSC 50s we are closing out (and are nearly out of).  The request inspired me to answer in the "long form, here's really what I think wheels can and can't do for you" manner.  Since the prospective buyer is someone I know and have ridden with (and who owns a set of FSWs for each of his two bikes), there was some inside baseball in my answer, so I present here a slightly modified version to suit the broad audience. 

Hi XXXX,

It's not like you're going to rocket through the categories on a much different trajectory if you've got these versus any other wheels - no wheel is going to do that for you. 

50s are fast.  You've probably seen the wind tunnel stuff that we posted, which shows that there are quite a few watts of savings versus FSWs.  So in your typical weekend stage race TT, for example, all else being equal "you on 50s" would beat "you on FSWs" by an accountable margin.  "You on 50s" would not be quite as fast as "you on Rails," and depending on the wind conditions "you on Rails" and "you on 404s" would be sort of a toss up. That's not really the way I think about the benefit of aero wheels.

Think of a fast, downhill, 90* turn, which spits you out into a short rise and then a long roller section.  The typical action at the turn is aggressive, with riders using the turn to try and initiate selection.  I'll give you a few scenarios for how that turn can go:

1. You get stuck on a bad line, or behind someone who screws up the entry of the turn, and no matter what wheels you're on it's going to cost you some bullets to close down the gap to riders ahead of you.

2. The guy in front of you goes into the turn well, but then botches the second half of the turn.

2a. On bad wheels you can't correct your line and see (1) above

2b. On good non-aero wheels (FSW) you can correct your line and you're going to use a small number of bullets, same as most everyone else, to make the turn basically at par with the group.

2c. On good aero wheels, you correct your line, use a smaller number of bullets, and do the turn at par.

3. You go through the turn behind a guy who just freaking nails his line.

3a. On bad wheels, he gaps you and you shoot bullets to get back with him

3b. On good non-aero wheels, you follow his line and do a bit better than "at par" through the turn.

3c. On good aero wheels, you follow his line, float up the early part of the rise, come through the guy who led you through the turn, start pedaling, and now the two of you are off the front where you have the option of having a go from there, making the group work to catch back on, or coasting and finding a nice spot back in the field. 

3c was my scenario on a recent group ride, and although it wasn't THE crux moment of that ride, I've no doubt that it helped set the stage for me to ride how I'd hoped to as the ride wore on. Everyone tries to think about aero wheels as having this very decisive impact, and I don't think they do.  It's not like you go off the front and they are this magical tail wind that carries you to glory.  If you ride smart and well, they can very effectively help you to avoid having to shoot bullets when it's not going to get you anything, and then have those bullets to use when they can actually do you some good at decisive points. 

That's my treatise on what aero wheels do and don't do for you.  In terms of our 50s versus others, in general we get love letters from people after they've been on our wheels for a while.  We got three yesterday, so I know that what we use and how we put it together are great.  Right now you're a 5, and in stark terms, fancy wheels don't mean s**t in 5s.  That kid YYYY (ed - local phenom du jour whose worst race of the 5 or 6 he's done is a 2nd) could ride flat tires and still whip ass, and the guys who don't train get killed.  There's too big a disparity in ability for wheels to mean that much.  But there's a good timing opportunity to get really nice wheels at a great price, and when you become a 4 and then a 3 and beyond, they can make more of an impact.  They aren't SO expensive that you'll be hesitant to use them.  I wouldn't necessarily recommend them for the crazy "pretend Roubaix" type races, but I got 5th in Cat 3 at our local "pretend Roubaix" race on 38s last year, they can deal with that kind of crap unless you hit THAT rut that's going to break your wheel no matter what wheel you're on. 

That's pretty much it.

Best,

Dave

In the words of the immortal (and imaginary) Forrest Gump, that's what I have to say about that. 

The Bottlenecks

We have bottlenecks. Every business does. In fact, it's been a long couple days and I have about 6 of them in my recycling bin right now. But that's not what I'm here to talk about.

For our 2013 road bike, the bottleneck is me. For the last few weeks Dave has been riding the frame we liked enough on paper to transition to the road. He liked it plenty but for one thing - it was the wrong size for him. He's a solid 56 and I'm a reliable 54 (even though we're exactly the same height and inseam, which is a blog for another day and ought to include the picture Dave should have taken of the guy "test riding" a $6K aero road bike in street shoes in the parking garage below the fancy-pants bike shop in our town, but that he only texted me about without actually committing to photo). Still, it rang all the right bells and pulled the right levers for him - exceptional cornering, faultless power transfer, light, confidence-inspiring, noticeably comfortable. The only thing it lacked was my corroboration. I spent the week in Florida for spring break (the part of the state where a friend advised my wife not to take her shirt off for anyone claiming to be producing an "independent film," whereby inspiring me to use the line more frequently than should have been funny yet somehow still was), but am back now and really want to ride it. But I really need to do about 20 other things, not even including producing an independent film starring my wife. So but for me, we may well have made a decision on next year's road bike. I'm the bottleneck. By this weekend though I should have resolved, um, myself. 

Because we build wheels to spec and have traditionally offered our customers a choice of hubs and spokes across a vast assortment of rims, our perpetual bottleneck has long been our build queue. On the one hand, waiting 3 weeks for a custom built set of wheels doesn't seem like a lot. But are we custom wheelbuilders, or a wheel company that builds by hand? We have debated that for about two years. While we've done so, we've traditionally set ourselves up more as custom wheelbuilders. Recently though we started acting more like a wheel company and "productizing" (the quote marks mean I actually use the word out loud but think less of myself for having done so) our wheel lineup by scaling back on some of the options. After taking wheels to the wind tunnel, for example, we could not see a lot of sense in offering CX-Ray spokes in our alloys so removed them as an option. And for the forthcoming Rail, we're looking at two "colorways" (quote marks as above) - a dark one (black hubs and spokes) and a bright one (red hubs and silver spokes). Simplifying offerings allows us to build in advance for inventory, since there is a greater chance that what gets built also gets sold. When we offered 4 different spokes and 4 different hubs (in as many as 10 colors) across each of 4 depths of carbon clincher rims, trying to guess what someone might buy and have it ready ahead of time was a fool's errand. 

Even with a simplified product line, wheel pre-orders always create bottlenecks of their own. Hundreds of rims arrive at the same time and need to be built here by hand immediately today now into hundreds of wheels for expectant customers. One of Dave's full time jobs right now is training and prepping a crew of wheelbuilders so we can manage peak periods much more quickly, and also build for deeper inventory so that in-stock wheels are ready even before you order them. Obviously, this wouldn't be possible without some level of the productization we've started to implement above. Yes you can still get Chris King and PowerTap hubs in the Rail and our other wheelsets; we just won't have them built in advance and ready to fly out the door.

Onward and upward. And since I know most of you are here just for news about the Rail I'll remind you to come back in a few days when the first Rails to pop out of the new mold emerge from customs and are in our hands.

Become Your Own Expert

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell

In these days where any internet forum on any topic can tell you exactly what you ought to think, it takes some doing to separate bombast from insight.   The thin veneer of "everyone told me I'd love these wheels (this helmet, these pedals, this size of bike, this pro-looking saddle to bar drop)" is just that - a thin veneer.  You only get so much time on your bike, and every ride during which you use less than the best setup you could, given whatever resource restrictions you've got, is a missed opportunity to have had more fun, gone faster, or been more comfortable. 

People who know me best might well describe me above all else as an anti-dogmatist.  They would likely soon thereafter describe me as long-winded, which makes perfect sense.  Every time I get involved in a topic, it's like one of those old make your own adventure stories.  Each door passed through leads to subsequent decisions that go further and further down a road particular to your situation, and away from any universal "this is the best."  So many people have it in mind that they want "THE best bike (wheels, tires, etc)" rather than the best bike (wheels, tires, etc) FOR ME."  Small change, big difference. 

Listen to, or read, how people phrase things, and how they legitimize their information.  Statements like "I put these wheels on and beat my old personal best on my 10 mile loop by 4 minutes" have a tendency to see me very sharply question whatever else that person might have to say.  I recently felt like I had to justify some acuity that I claimed to have regarding wheel performance, which I thought I effectively did by explaing that I've ridden the last 15,000 or 20,000 or so miles with a sometimes burdensome awareness of my equipment.  There really is no "just go ride" for me anymore, and I have the luxury of being able to think I'm feeling something, and make a considered equipment change relevant to that facet, and fairly effectively either validate or dismiss that feeling. 

I'm far from saying that you have to sentence yourself to this lifetime of acute awareness to what's going on - a ton of the enjoyment that people get from riding and racing is in just "going with it" and tuning a metric ton of other stuff out.  What I am saying, however, is that everyone who will read this probably spends more than enough time in the saddle to develop a very useful awareness of your equipment in what is a pretty equipment-relevant activity. 

The better you arm yourself with awareness of what equipment does and doesn't do for you and the people in your context, the better capacity you will have to select and manage the equipment that is going to be the most beneficial for what it is you want it to do. 

Become your own expert.