Who made sense of the CW test of high-profile wheels?

FransJacques

It started really well and had some very useful stats (rim width, inertia, lateral stiffness, etc.) but they got lazy and only gave write ups on 5 of the wheels.

What frustrated me are the criteria for nixing the Soul wheels, they were the lightest and some of the stiffest on test. How did they lose out to wheels 300grams more? Also, surprisingly to me, the Fulcrums did well but also
came up out of the top 5, again why? There was also no aero testing, and isn't that what we want aero wheels for?

As an 83 kg racer with a fair bit of power I don't care if a wheel is uncomfortable, I *want* road feel thank you very much. I want to feel the traction I have on corners and sprinting stiffness, etc.

There was no justificaton from the article. I feel it needed a couple 100 more words. I think this is also where CW has a tough time balancing hard-core racer needs with those riding 5-6 hr death-march sportives.

ugo.santalucia

Fulcrum sell well in the UK and a favourable review is to be expected from the many retailers who stock them. Soul don't sell in the UK, or at least they are not mainstream, hence the opposite. If you expct a magazine review to be un-biased, welcome to this world... Magazines sell advertising space as well.
The only credible criterium for high profile wheels, which is how many stickers can you fit on the rims, has been totally ignored...
Aero test involves the use of a wind tunnel, which is not in the budget of a weekly cycling magazine

Crimmey

Nice. Also on the front cover it stated something like 'Caaaaarbon Wheeels! - Why you need them?' No explaination to be found inside except the first few words mentioned 'racing' vaguely. Did you read the High 5 Advertisement.... I mean article on energy drinks? I searched for the obligatory ' this is an advertisement feature' on the top of the page but couldn't find one.

Good job I only paid about £1.40 a copy as the time actually spent reading it is tiny.

napoleond

I stopped buying it 3 years ago.

on-yer-bike

Giant wheels the best with not very good bearings! I wonder if Giant buy a lot of ad space in CW. Obsession with behavior in crosswinds is about as close to aero dynamics as they got.

petemadoc

Crimmey wrote:

Nice. Also on the front cover it stated something like 'Caaaaarbon Wheeels! - Why you need them?' No explaination to be found inside except the first few words mentioned 'racing' vaguely. Did you read the High 5 Advertisement.... I mean article on energy drinks? I searched for the obligatory ' this is an advertisement feature' on the top of the page but couldn't find one.

Good job I only paid about £1.40 a copy as the time actually spent reading it is tiny.

I nearly posted a new thread about this

It was beyond ridiculous! I too was looking for the "this is an advertisement" written at the top of the page but it wasn't there.

Then I put the mag down to drink my coffee and lone behold a full back page advert for High 5! ! :shock:

Unbelievable.

I know these guys have to pull in advertising revenue but come on.

Bobbinogs

Crimmey wrote:

Did you read the High 5 Advertisement.... I mean article on energy drinks? I searched for the obligatory ' this is an advertisement feature' on the top of the page but couldn't find one.

Yepp, ditto. I also checked those pages a few times as I could not see how an article so biased to one manufacturer could be trotted out as an article rather than an advert. The science was so dodgy but then the link between the CW sportive and High5 made it all quite clear in that it was all a load of tatt, "use High5-ride 26% better", fer feck's sake.

I also thought the wheel review was rubbish. A couple of reviewers like a wheel, 9/10. Only one bloke likes a wheel, it gets lumped in with "the rest", no marks and an inference that your £1,000 will be wasted.

petemadoc

I was actually quite interested in the whole 2:1 thing but the article was so biased it was hard to believe any of it.

Only when it had a section listing other brands that offer the same 2:1 bla de bla thing did it give it any credibility.

What I really wanted to know was what exactly can we get the magical 2:1 ingredients from. I'm guessing fruit juice (fructose) and some sugary stuff like flapjacks and sugary drinks . . . .

So that'll be what I normally use then

andy_nD

Does anyone have a scan of the High5 page they could send me? I stopped my subscription years back and can't seem to find any copies around these parts.

I took part in the study in October last year and would be interested to know what they're saying.. For what it's worth, I did notice a massive improvement during the study, despite going into it with a healthy amount of scepticism.. I rode 2 hours longer than my baselines, which was an improvement of about 60%, and I felt much better for the first few hours of riding.

That said, 5 hours on a turbo is different to 5 hours on the road and I haven't been able to reproduce that kind of improvement since in real life, so take from it what you will..

cougie

You rode 5 hours on a turbo ???

I remember doing a trial for a caffeine drink once.

I had to do 3 25TTs on a turbo - one with no caffeine, one with 1 dose of caffeine, and 1 with a double dose.
I never knew which was which and my times didn't give much of a clue. Also the bike was changed so that's probably more important than the caffeine.

26% improvement (in what) sounds too good to be true ?

andy_nD

Yep - on three separate occasions to boot! Not an experience I'd care to repeat, and plenty motivation to keep me off the turbo for the whole winter this year.

To their credit, they actually did a pretty good job at keeping things consistent - same bike every time, proper calibrated turbos, core temperature sensors, the works... It's just that 5 hours on the turbo is never going to be the same as 5 hours on the road.

26% is (I think!) the 'extra' distance people were able to ride by following the high5 regime when riding to exhaustion, compared against the distance ridden when eating/drinking what you would normally consume. So, against a 3 hour baseline, I guess the average person maintained a further 45 minutes at the same intensity. In my case I managed nearly 2 hours extra, but I'm completely useless at remembering to eat so part of that was possibly down to having someone giving me things to eat and drink every 20 minutes, but I was genuinely very surprised at the extent of the improvement all the same.

symo

How come PX wheels weren't tested?? They cost under a bag of sand, or is it embarrassing for the bigger brands.

petemadoc

andy_nD wrote:

Yep - on three separate occasions to boot! Not an experience I'd care to repeat, and plenty motivation to keep me off the turbo for the whole winter this year.

To their credit, they actually did a pretty good job at keeping things consistent - same bike every time, proper calibrated turbos, core temperature sensors, the works... It's just that 5 hours on the turbo is never going to be the same as 5 hours on the road.

26% is (I think!) the 'extra' distance people were able to ride by following the high5 regime when riding to exhaustion, compared against the distance ridden when eating/drinking what you would normally consume. So, against a 3 hour baseline, I guess the average person maintained a further 45 minutes at the same intensity. In my case I managed nearly 2 hours extra, but I'm completely useless at remembering to eat so part of that was possibly down to having someone giving me things to eat and drink every 20 minutes, but I was genuinely very surprised at the extent of the improvement all the same.

Was it a 26% further than zero food while riding or 26% further than eating flapjacks and gels etc

petemadoc

symo wrote:

How come PX wheels weren't tested?? They cost under a bag of sand, or is it embarrassing for the bigger brands.

Good point! Where's the cheapo and probably most popular option

andy_nD

PeteMadoc wrote:

Was it a 26% further than zero food while riding or 26% further than eating flapjacks and gels etc

26% further than what you'd normally eat over that time/distance. For me I think that was a couple of bars and some energy drink..

giant_man

CW for ya .....