One race and they were a revelation.. but a second training ride ended in disaster when wet rims meant I overcooked a corner ( dislocating my shoulder on a tree) , and then the freewheel imploded rendering them useless. I have taken the the Rhinos off and retired the wheels. I suppose I could rebuild the rim into a disk hub, but I am not ready for a switch to disks yet.. ( maybe another blog post) SO for now. the rhinos are hanging in the garage and the wheels are perched , as a constant reminder of what a fucking huge waste of money they are.
Despite this set back, tubulars are apparently one serious improvement you can make to your riding and racing: so I have persevered .
Instead of carbon.. I have opted for a pair of Mavic reflex rims built onto stock 105 hubs. these have come shod with Challenge Grifos, so I should be able to directly compare the clincher to tubular as I have trained on Grifos since last summer ( until switching to Mud2s).
I will stick them on the Merida and see how they feel. The idea is that they are for training on..
I squirt half a bottle of sealant in each wheel pump them up to about 38 ish and its time for a test ride.
Just a pump and tool. no need for spare inners or much else and its thrashing time.
Riding them hard around the regular Tapnage loop, impressions were pretty good. Not a monstrous revelation but I was definitely carving harder into corners. a tricky off camber pine needle strewn corner where I crashed a few weeks ago was taken increasingly confident.
I was very nervous smashing them over tree roots, while this wouldn't be an issue on a cross circuit, woodland training brings its own problems, hence I ran them fairly high at 38psi. I hope to use these a lot through the next training block, though unless I race on them, or buy a decent set of race wheels, I will be well pissed come Autumn and drop back to clinchers with Latex.
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