Originally Posted by hubcyclist

If I'm following, OP is supposed to be some type of troll? I don't hang around here enough to know who's who. But I'm going to provide a bit of practical real world experience that I think illustrates that all the hand-wringing over wheels/weight for a lot of cyclists is a bit overblown. Recently, I rode a loop on my entry level Allez, stock rims. The same day and within a few minutes of my own ride (I started at 11:41am and he started the loop at 11:49), a friend of mine who is an accomplished masters racer with a carbon bike and carbon aero wheels. He and I are about the same size and build. I completed the loop in 37:52 averaging 212w (max 558w), he completed the loop in 38:10 also averaging 212w (max 565w). I don't know his NP, but I can't imagine it would be much different, we were both doing steady endurance and no interval work. This is probably as close to a real life experiment one can get and the difference likely came to my body position vs his. So I do think in quite a few cases, folks are spending a lot of money for almost no perceptible gain.