I don't get it

I have been thinking of writing this for a while, but have held off, what people do is up to them. But since moving to Perth I see this every time I ride, and every time it leaves me a little baffled. What am I talking about? Training on deep dish rims. I don't get it.


Riding around Perth it has become more and more common to see people spinning along on carbon deep dish rims. Usually around the 50mm to 60mm deep type, rather than the really deep 90mm type. I think it has become more common as the wheels themselves have become more common and the prices have reduced. But why ride them, that is what I don't get. If you race enough to justify the wheels, then I would have thought you would want to preserve them for racing. If you don't race, then why get the wheels, other than to look cool(?) to your buddies in the pack. I race on a set of HEDs and I occasionally train on them as well, usually just before a race to make sure everything is working as they should and to get a feel for them again. But train on them day to day, no way. Plus why would I want to, training is just that, training. I don't set my bike up to be as fast as it can be for training, the point of training is to work hard, duh. Otherwise I would train in my time trial helmet as well. If I want to go faster in training, I ride harder, it's cheaper.

Okay if you are some guy gunning alongside the river at 40km/h with your deep rims, I still don't get it, but I can appreciate it. You have the legs to back up the wheels. But some old guy pootling along on his $10000 bike at 31km/h. I don't get that.

I had a quick Google about this earlier, and a lot of opinions seem to be along the lines of, well these are my nicest wheels, so why not get some proper use out of them, better than them collecting dust in the spare room. That's cool, I mean in the end most modern carbon wheels are up to the challenges of training rides. But if you have to train on them to feel like you are getting your money's worth, did you have enough cause to justify buying them in the first place?

In the end I don't really care, as I said before, what people do is up to them. If you can afford the wheels and it makes you feel happy, then go for it. It is not as if nice gear is reserved only for people who race. But I still don't get it.

Stepping off my soap box, I had a little nice ride this morning. Good and quick. A couple of hours with some intervals thrown in. Very nice morning for it, bit chilly, but lovely and clear with light winds. Autumn is my favourite time of year in Perth and mornings like today's are why. The only bad part of the ride was that I sort of boinked a curb a little bit. Not hard, more of a nudge. There is a corner near the Narrows Bridge in Perth where you leave the road and enter the cycleway. I came around that corner a little to hot and instead of going on to the cycleway, sort of ran into the curb beside it. I had slammed on the brakes pretty hard when I had seen what was happening, so I was barely moving on impact, plus I didn't come off or anything. Felt a little silly though. I managed to stop myself taking the guilty, 'did anyone see that' look around, since I know people did.

After the curb encounter I had thought about calling this post 'Curb your enthusiasm' but I thought that might have been a bit to much of a Dad Joke. I am a Dad, so its not as if I don't have the required authority to make Dad Jokes, but that isn't really an excuse.

Perhaps boinking curbs is the real reason I don't train on deep dish carbon rims.