Gram Fondo

In what appears to be a continuing theme, I will now take a picture from our Facebook page and write a blog about it.

Here’s Dave.  Unfortunately, in this picture, he’s experiencing a bout of rapid slowdown syndrome.  Ain’t that a b?  But anyway, Dave’s fast, has won big races, and has ridden everything under the sun, so we asked him to test out a set of Rails.  We didn’t necessarily have this particular test in mind, but we certainly knew it was a possibility.  In any case, prior to this particular test, he’d found the Rails to be fast and stiff.  If you look closely at his legs, you’ll see they’re different from mine in two ways: a) they are not so pale as to be translucent and b) they look like they might enable him to hit a pretty good sprint.  In this case, looks don’t lie.  Andy Schleck, he’s not.  If he finds them stiff, I can pretty well guarantee that you will too.

How does the wheel look now?  Straight as an arrow, no issue, straight back into use.  Unfortunately, the rider was concussed so he is not straight back into use. 

Various people on various forums have expressed their “disappointment” that we have produced a wheel set that weighs what Rails do (which is just around 1500 grams, for the record).  I’m not kidding, they actually say they’re disappointed.  Scenes like above are an unfortunate part of racing.  Sprints like Dave has are unfortunate parts of my hopes of finishing in the money in a lot of races.  Grams are great, the fewer the better, right?  But stuff's got to be what it's got to be or else it won't be what it could be.  These are looking an awful lot like they are what they could be.

Of course there’s a balance, you don’t want to roll out on quarter ton manhole covers just as much as you don’t want wheels that can’t deal with the rigors of real life and racing.  What you don’t see about the picture above is that this event happened in a 6 man break that had 40 seconds on the field.  One of them had won the race, they just didn’t know who yet.  So, stiff enough to make the break, fast enough to make is stick, and strong enough to deal with when things don’t go exactly according to plan.  Yup, I’ll take that.