Disc wheels

Triathlons cost money. There is the obvious cost of entry, which ranges from about $50 for short, local races to the $600 or so for an official Ironman. A triathlete who competes in four medium-distance races over the course of a year can expect to pay about $500 for the privilege.

Even more significant are the equipment and training costs. Swimming incurs either the one-time expense of buying a wetsuit or else the ongoing expense of renting them and a continual fee for year-round access to a pool for training. Bicycling costs a bike and its array of related equipment: helmet, shoes, spare tubes, spare tires, and so on. Even running has its costs by way of regular replacement of worn-out shoes and of keeping ibuprofen well stocked in the medicine cabinet. I haven't seen any exact figures, but I suspect that many triathletes average spending more per year on their sport than I ever did on my car. I'm probably one of them. I'm too afraid to run the numbers.

Awhile back, I decided never again to splurge for a mid-end bicycle (and never once to know the feel of a high-end one). Entry-level bikes deliver great bang for the buck nowadays, and even a high-end bike will degrade into a squeaky, barely ridable mess without proper, ongoing maintenance effort and know-how. My plan is to ride low-end bikes and to be expert at keeping them in great condition and thus ride well for cheapish. Hence, when it came time to buy a triathlon bike last year, I bought a low-end one whose price, after taxes and shipping, was less than $1300. That's modest. It's about half of what a “serious” (mid-end) tri-bike costs, and, frankly, I look forward to riding past many of them in my races coming up this spring.

Bang for buck is key for me. For bicycling in triathlons, there are basically four categories in which a person may buy himself a faster time, listed here in decreasing order of bang-for-buck.

• Tri-bike (versus upright road bike)

• Aero helmet

• Aero tri-suit

• Disc or aero wheels

The conventional wisdom goes something like: bicycles cost a lot, but you must buy a bicycle anyway, so choose a tri-bike. Then continue to spend on the additional items until you can fit your rapidly thinning wallet into your tight Lycra shorts.

My limit stops after the aero helmet. That's because I feel a twinge of pain just about anytime I spend money on anything, and the amount of pain roughly corresponds to the amount being spent. (I think of this spending-pain as the blessing of being thrifty.) What this means is that I say “no” to the tri-suit and the disc wheels. I can take or leave the suit, but the wheels I wish I had. This is my dark, not-so-secret secret.

It's only through the discipline of rationality that I can convince myself that I'm better off not buying disc wheels. Spending upwards of $2000 to shave off mere seconds in a race, maybe a few minutes in an hours-long ride, is not smart spending. I know this, and from it I feel the sadness of knowing that I will never sit atop a machine equipped with disc wheels. Thriftiness has its costs.

My obsession with disc wheels is complete nonsense. I would want disc wheels even if they weren't faster. Disc wheels are just that cool to me. I like how they look, and I like even more how they sound. I remember the first time I seeing disc wheels on television during the Olympics and Dad explaining to me how the discs made the bike faster. That made no sense to me, and even as an adult I don't fully understand the dynamics of why they're faster. But a bike wheel without spokes? So cool. And that they make a distinct, whoosh-whooshing sound with each pedal stroke? So cool! There's no sneaking up on fellow racers when using disc wheels; it's like shouting from behind, “Awesome machine, on your left.” Or that's how I imagine it. And imagining it is the most I'll ever do.