79pmooney

Yup. I was a skinny, light, long limbed climber with all slow twitch muscles. The "flatties" hated me when the race wasn't flat. But on the flat, all those little accelerations that they did so easily took a much bigger percentage of my max each time. Then there was getting on the wheel going by. Closing a gap. Lets say when you are at your max, super light rims and tires mean you are two feet behind that wheel and heavier rims put you at 5 feet back. 3' at 28 miles per hour comes out to 0.07 seconds. Who cares? In a 5 hour race, totally meaningless, right?

But, you are at your max. 2 feet means you are on that wheel, 5' means you aren't. You may not be able to close that extra 3 feet or it may take you minutes to do it. If you do make it, you may be cooked for the rest of the race. But getting that little extra jump to grab that wheel, that extra 0.07 seconds up the road? You're on! You're in the break. You may will be finishing 10 minutes ahead of that other you on heavier wheels who didn't quite make it.

In my hardest race ever, I was half way up the deciding hill 15 miles before the finish, in about 30th place with an unbroken line of rider in front of me. I was hurting bad. The race had been very fast and I'd been an instigator in an ill fated break. Looked over my shoulder to see how far I could fade back and still be with the leaders (being fully aware this might cause a field split that might never come together again). Next rider was 25 yards back. That's about 4 seconds at the speed we were going. I knew instantly the wheel I was on was going to beat that guy and everybody else back there by 10 minutes. I stayed on and was well rested and had waited in line, then got my drink at the water fountain before anybody else finished.

That was at steady speed and rims didn't matter. It was about holding a wheel at any cost. I paid a LOT to stay on that one. But at the top of the hil, I was there and the guy behind me wasn't. (I was on 270 gm average rims and 250 gm tubulars so they WERE very light and helped me to an unknown degree over the previous 3 hours.) Point being - the little things in races matter far more than any analysis of seconds gained or lost, etc. will ever tell you. If you are strong enough to simple clobber everyone with the raw power of your legs, those light rims might not matter. If you have to race with all your smarts and all your resources to be there at the end, rims can be make or break items.