Wheelset or powermeter

CramCycle wrote: »

Mulling over one or the other, my partner got a voucher for me to use, and is generously donating the voucher at a reduced rate to me. Not a bike to work thing, the company give rewards when big projects go well, and a very big project went very well.

So here is my dilemma, I have been thinking and saving up for either a powermeter or a set of wheels, but still way off. I have put off the power meter as I can't get a 4iiii dual sided in my size in stock anywhere (specifically 165mm Ultegra or Dura Ace) and the Garmin SPD-SL are extortionate (and new and not validated), although now they are cheaper with this discounted voucher.

The other option is I also could do with a set of spare disc wheels, and I am looking at either of these, which are now a lot more affordable: https://eu.huntbikewheels.com/collections/road-cx-disc-brake-wheels/products/hunt-30carbon-aero-disc-road-wheelset-1319g-30deep-27wide-999?variant=31723747803191#techspecs or https://eu.huntbikewheels.com/collections/gravel-wheels/products/gravel-race-disc-wheelset#techspecs

If you had the choice, which would you go for, the wheels are a good practical option, having had to put the bike away when the wheels took ages to be repaired, also nice to have spares for races etc.

But the powermeter is also nice, and I had scrapped the idea of the Garmin as they are extortionate but the 4iiii ticked a lot of boxes, full crankset replacement and I need new rings anyway, reasonable price, but just no stock.

Tell me how to spend my money. In my head, wheels are winning out, and save for the 4iiii and hopefully it comes back into stock somewhere at some point.

What BB do you have? Have a spare power meter on my cross bike (Not cross season so it's hanging up) if you want to borrow it for a few weeks/months to see how you get on before making a decision?

That's fair enough. You like what you like. I was a firm fan of SPD-SL's too but then I got the PM as a pressie and had to switch to Look. If I were to claim that I noticed even the tiniest of infinitesimal differences between the two, I would be lying .

I presume you know that the new Garmin Rally is available for SPD SL and are still discounting on price. But if it is as it appears to be - basically a properly and finally (!) totally sorted Vector 3 system, then it should be really good.

Also, as a powermeter user for a long time now - I would not pay the premium for dual sided. Single is perfect. All you need is a number and for that number to have some element of consistency.

To summarise then.

A wheelset will make you think you're faster.

A powermeter will shatter that illusion.

G1032 wrote: »

Disagree re the dual sided though. I have a L/R imbalance at endurance watts that's as much as 3 to 4%. But at SS and threshold and above I'm pretty much 50/50 balanced. So if you don't have the imbalance consistently the same across your zones it's going to be problematic I'd imagine

My issue with the dual sided thing is that it's an interesting measurement.... once.
The first time I checked it it was 49:51 and that's pretty much what it has always been. - What am I going to do about it? It's like measuring the length of my legs. What the hell can I do about it if I find out one is 1mm shorter than the other? It's interesting to measure once but where's the value re-measuring everytime I go out on my bike. So, for me, I paid a significant premium for a metric that is of no benefit to me.

Good to hear another vote for the Assiomas though.

Now if only my Garmins would stop working....

New wheelset might increase level of enjoyment on a bike. Powermeter will certainly kill it. Powermeters are for pros or pro wanabes in my opinion.

strmin wrote: »

New wheelset might increase level of enjoyment on a bike. Powermeter will certainly kill it. Powermeters are for pros or pro wanabes in my opinion.

I reckon that's a bit unfair really. If you don't have a huge amount of time, then power is the best way to train/get better. No guessing and no hiding.

strmin wrote: »

New wheelset might increase level of enjoyment on a bike. Powermeter will certainly kill it. Powermeters are for pros or pro wanabes in my opinion.

Now that I definitely disagree with.

I'm neither pro nor wannabe, but by far and away the best thing I ever did was buy and use a power meter. It cut through swathes of nonsense and notions, put structure on my training, benchmarked my output, massively increased interest and usage of turbo and rollers over the winters, is brilliant for structured interval training or even spontanteous out-on-a-spin intervals for keeping you focused on a long climb for example.

A wheelset is lovely like a new car smell is lovely, but nothing has had a more positive and long-term consistent effect on my cycling than a pm.

But, that's only my experience of it obviously.

fat bloke wrote: »

Now that I definitely disagree with.

I'm neither pro nor wannabe, but by far and away the best thing I ever did was buy and use a power meter. It cut through swathes of nonsense and notions, put structure on my training, benchmarked my output, massively increased interest and usage of turbo and rollers over the winters, is brilliant for structured interval training or even spontanteous out-on-a-spin intervals for keeping you focused on a long climb for example.

A wheelset is lovely like a new car smell is lovely, but nothing has had a more positive and long-term consistent effect on my cycling than a pm.

But, that's only my experience of it obviously.

I totally understand your point. Powermeters have their place. You might not be pro wannabe, but you WANT to hit some target. You train, you do intervals. From your own words riding without a powermeter is just nonsense. Powermeter makes sense to you.
But majority of people just enjoy riding their bikes and they don't think about intervals when they out.

Might be worth taking a look at these as well. GPLama's review of the PM was very good. I'm planning on getting one (I've a Cannondale crank which makes everything awkward), just waiting for a voucher to arrive. I was going to hold out for the Favero SPD-SLs but I've run out of patience. I'm not swapping pedals systems, I've Shimano on everything now so locked in.

https://retail.cigalacycling.com/collections/powermeters/products/inpeak-shimano-custom

strmin wrote: »

. From your own words riding without a powermeter is just nonsense.

Ah jeez no I certainly don't think that. I meant nonsense in regard to training intensity and stuff.

For example, I changed to another bike there last year and just didn't bother putting the power pedals on. I was happy out riding around, happy as Larry. The for the winter I went back on the rollers and just used a speed sensor, thinking I was a great fella, pedalling hard, training like a hoor.

A couple of weeks ago I put the pm back into action and repeated my winter training to see what I was actually doing to the speed sensor - sure I was only codding myself. No consistency at all within sessions and generally lower intensities both within and between sessions. In that way the pm cuts through self delusion or general training bullsh1te.

Anyway they're not for everyone maybe but, particularly for winter indoor trainer motivation, I found it spectacularly good for me. Turning it off for the summer and just riding your bike - absolutely, I can completely understand that too.

I recently got both.

New wheel set all day every day. Power meter doesn't provide that much extra especially if you already have a smart trainer

Seriously though, unless you plan on making use of a PM for training, then a wheelset sounds like the better choice.

CramCycle wrote: »

I was looking at this, what is the tax/customs issue with this? I can only see their Canadian site and worry I would get double stung for import tax, and how much is the customs in total?

Ok, this is a bit weird, but I was just looking at this (for my GRX crank that's now spare - could move the 105 to something else). I only found experiences from the UK, but they seemed to shy away because of the VAT/ Customs issue v new options. Although presumably that was for more standard crank lengths.

fwiw for me, if I felt the need, a new 105 looks a guaranteed price option, but I'm on 172.5mm cranks.

Having had power meters off and on over the years, sure, they’re unbeatable as a training tool when your head is in it, but when your head isn’t in it then it’s just an expensive graph on strava.

I had a spell off the bike earlier this year, and coming back to it my sole aim for any spin is to hang in with the fast group and take as many turns as possible before I’m chewing the bars at the back and skipping turns. In other words they dictate the effort, not my power meter. I rarely train alone anymore, and when I do I don’t really look at my garmin, so power has become irrelevant for me at this moment in time.

My 105 4iiii (which I had on an otherwise dura ace equipped bike) disintegrated and is going back for warranty repair, and I don’t really miss it. I’ll probably bump up my sale ad when I get it back after the repair.

Conversely, I had a spoke snap on Sundays spin, and have just pulled the trigger on hunt 36/50 wheels because they had them in stock for immediate dispatch because I didn’t want to be forced to take more time off the bike. I’ll get my hope wheels rebuilt for wetter days and winter, or in the event my new wheels need repairs.

TLDR, power is great if you’ve the head for consistent training, spare wheels are great so you’re not off the bike due to mechanicals, so I say use the voucher to buy your partner a surprise gift and get a set of midrange spare wheels

For longer efforts your heart rate is just as good for gauging your effort.

comete wrote: »

For longer efforts your heart rate is just as good for gauging your effort.

It isn't really

comete wrote: »

Why not?

Because in a properly done longer effort, (10 minutes or more), your HR will rise slowly over the first couple of minutes and then flatten out for the remainder of the effort. If you're tired it might take even longer to rise to the flat line, but this can differ from person to person. My HR for example rises much quicker when I'm tired.

The tendancy on these longer efforts when only using HR is to get the HR to the target and try hold it for the effort. 9 times out of 10 this will mean you're overshooting your target wattage. HR I find shoots up too quickly when you're riding to a HR target. The first couple of minutes of a threshold effort for example always seem too easy to me when riding to power. But 10 minutes in you know it's bang on. With only HR to gauge effort it's next to impossible to trust that initial couple of minutes as a correct effort.

You also tend to react to changes in HR brought on by going up inclines or down descents and subsequently change your power output. If you're maintaining a constant power your HR doesn't shift really significantly..

Even on long endurance rides with HR only, I used to find that in order to keep my HR average within the prescribed range I could end up spending maybe 20% time in the wrong HR zone. When riding to a power target HR stays within the correct zones. Of course there are really no such things as zones, meaning that HR zones are kind of a continuum. Like if your upper Z2 is 140 BPM then 142 isn't going up give your a different physiological response, but when riding to power as opposed to HR your much more likely to hit a consistent HR.

Basically with HR you're training to an output. With power you're training to the input.

Personally I'd love to be able to train effectively based on perceived effort, but it's a skill I don't possess, I'm rubbish at it. I've tried training with heart rate, and for mainly the same reason of being rubbish at moderating my effort, I struggled to make a go of it. I got a power meter to try to overcome my own shortcomings.

The power meter made a huge difference to the quality and effectiveness of my training. But the power meter itself is just a tool of course, it's only useful if I use it well/properly. And the truth is that, while the power meter provides me with what I consider more useful feedback than HR, it's following a (TrainerRoad) training plan that has really made the difference for me in terms of training quality. In the absence of a decent training plan, the power meter would still be a useful tool for me, but it would be an extravagance that would be a lot harder to justify to myself.

Re the power meter turning rides into a chore, I'm certainly prone to that issue myself when my main focus during a ride is that power display. But I would be the very same if I was training to HR, I'd still be focused on a number, just a different number. The tool isn't the issue there as much as me, I could just ignore the numbers but I know the training benefit of the ride would suffer. To a certain extent that's just the natural consequence of focusing on trying to get faster on the bike, the balance shifts from "going for a ride" to "getting maximum training benefit' more often than not. I can't blame the tools for that, just my inclination to focus on future goals rather than the in-the-moment fun of riding a bike.

So for me, training to power has been very worthwhile, but it's about more than just the tool itself. Of course, you don't necessarily need a power meter to train to power. If you are happy to train regularly on a turbo then either a smart trainer, or training with virtual power, are just as useful and might(!) be cheaper.


As for wheels, I like wheels, I like building wheels, I've been mucking about with wheels for years and spent longer than that reading about other people mucking about with wheels. While I consider good wheels hugely beneficial, my idea of what constitutes "good wheels" has shifted and changed a lot over the years.

Like many people I drool over many of the top-end factory wheels available, but very few of them remain on my fantasy shopping list. I know that good wheels will make me marginally faster (quality bearings, aero rims, light weight, etc.), but I'm now a lot more honest with myself about exactly how small that marginal difference is, and how hard it would hit my pocket. Nowadays I'm much more inclined to think about whether the wheels are repairable if I break a spoke, or damage a rim, or how easy it will be to replace the bearings when that becomes necessary, etc.

Many many wheelsets start to look a bit sheepish when viewed from that perspective. Factor in value for money, as subjective as that is, and I instantly rule out many more options. That leaves me with the option of building my own, or opting for professionally hand-built wheels that I know I'll be able to maintain no matter what happens to them over time - in either case I get a great deal of freedom to choose the various components myself, and I'll know what I'm getting (e.g. I can buy an actual Kinlin-branded rim rather than one that has been rebranded to look like something else, or buy a Miche or Bitex -branded hub rather than the very same hub with a different name and a significant price hike). Maybe it's an age thing, but those things matter a lot more to me now that they ever used to in the past.


All of this is too late to count as telling you how to spend your money of course, since you've done that already. But that doesn't matter, because the best purchase is the one you are happy with rather than one which someone else swears blind is the "best thing ever". I'd some up my thoughts as:

Buy a power meter if you want to get faster on a bike. But only if you don't have the skill to train effectively on perceived effort, and you are willing to commit to a regular training schedule.

Buy a wheelset if you want to make your life easier in the long run with a pair of decent wheels with a long and reliable lifespan. But that means choosing the wheelset based on factors which often don't make their way into the marketing blurb. And I'd suggest looking at hand-built wheels.

Macy0161 wrote: »

Let us know!

PM arrived, no customs charges. Happy days