What’s faster up 14,000 feet? light wheels or deeper aero wheels?

As cyclists, we know that deep aero wheels are usually faster than lighter, shallower wheels when riding on flat roads. And we know that when climbing very steep roads, lighter wheels will be faster than deeper wheels. But what about conditions that are in between? At what point do aerodynamics, er, outweigh the benefits of slightly less weight?

In this episode of Project 14er, presented by Cadex, we set out to test our model-based theory that a gradient of 5% and a speed of 9mph is that tipping point.

To test our theory, we picked Lookout Mountain outside of Golden, Colorado, which averages 5% up 1,273 feet of elevation gain over 7.4km. Doing 11 laps up Lookout puts us at 14,000 feet.

Why 14,000 feet? Our colleague Betsy Welch cooked up Project 14er as a challenge earlier this year. It’s far more accessible than Everesting, and is an ode to all the 14,000ft mountains here in our great state.

Dan Cavallari and Ben Delaney alternated among riding three sets of wheels:

Cadex 42 Disc Tubeless front and rear (42mm-tall rims, 1,327g)
Cadex 65 Disc Tubeless front and rear (65mm-tall rims, 1,501g)
Cadex 42 Disc Tubeless front, Cadex 65 Disc Tubeless rear

Ben's plan was to standardize everything he realistically could: the same bike, the same new Cadex tires at the same pressure, the same position as much as possible, and one bottle per lap. He aimed to keep average power the same for each lap, at about 275 watts. Dan spent the day paying attention to feel, not numbers. Since conditions would likely change throughout the day, we switched wheels every lap or every other lap.

Read the full story: https://www.velonews.com/gear/road-ge...
And check out the full line of Cadex wheels: https://www.cadex-cycling.com/us/show...