Recently, I've been riding a disc road bike for early morning (or late night) training sessions and commuting
but the ride quality is driving me crazy.
I suspect I'm defining "disc road bike" wrong,
but I shouldn't worry about it.
The poor ride quality isn't because of the tension structure or membrane structure,
it's because of the disc wheel itself. Campagnolo's Ghibli
feels completely different from this Mavic Comet.
For crosswinds, it's not particularly sensitive,
and fitting a 50mm deep rim wheel on the front
catches my attention much more
because of how the steering gets pulled.
I think it would be dangerous on a really windy day.
The reason the front wheel isn't a deep rim is that
this Comet has a WO rim specification, and with disc wheels,
if the tire tube valve is too long,
you can't fill it with air, so having a lower rim height on the front
makes it easier to standardize the spare tube valve length.
The poor ride quality also relates to the fact that despite being nominally a 23C,
I'm running a narrow tire
on what would be considered an ultra-narrow rim by today's standards,
pumped up to 9 bar.
The tire's actual width is around 22C.
Climbing isn't exactly lively,
but it's not as bad as I expected.
On flat ground, I feel like I'm being pushed from behind,
but what's surprising is on slight gradients of less than 2%
it seems to roll forward abnormally well.
With a spoked wheel, when you apply heavy pedaling power,
first the hub deforms in the direction of rotation,
then the spokes also deform,
and only after both have finished deforming
does the rim actually rotate. But with disc wheels,
due to the structure,
the hub's rotation instantly becomes the rim's rotation,
giving it a rigid-body feel—that's probably why it feels this way.
The difference in feel between disc wheels and spoked wheels is more pronounced on slight gradients
than on completely flat ground,
so maybe that's why I notice it.
The image at the top was from yesterday morning,
in the Kazahuki Pass tunnel around 7 in the morning.
That day I ran 92km excluding the commute distance.
When I tried to turn the bike around while holding it
at the tunnel entrance,
the moment the disc wheel's surface became parallel to the tunnel entrance
（the bike's orientation became perpendicular to the road）,
I felt a wind so strong I thought the bike was lifting off the ground.
Just the bike's own weight shows how much crosswind force
the disc wheel receives.
When I got back near home, the timing was just right,
so I stopped by two wholesalers to handle some business.
At the second one—a wholesaler that's the only one in Japan
handling Fulcrum and Pinarello—
after my business, one of the people there called me over and said
that two important people, or maybe technical advisors or something,
from Campagnolo headquarters had come by,
and since their morning meeting would be done,
could he bring those two people to the nom Lab in the afternoon?
He said they want to hear about wheels and such.
I declined.
Then he asked if tomorrow（meaning today）would work,
but I turned that down too.
Looking at the Shamal Ultra DB（aluminum rim version）and
the Bora Ultra WTO,
the people at Campagnolo understand
the concept of spoke weight distribution,
even if they don't call it that.
Otherwise, they couldn't make wheels with that kind of construction.
For steel spoke wheels,
I'm confident I can build wheels that outperform most mass-produced wheels,
not just from Campagnolo,
but that's because I'm not subject to the constraint of
having to accommodate riders up to just over 100kg body weight on every wheel,
and I don't account for the individual attributes involved in maintenance like soldered joint connections—
in other words, I'm relying on what you might call a cheat technique.
Taking all that into consideration, wheels like Bora and Zonda are
wheels with substantially superior performance.
In fact, I've never rebuilt or resoldered these wheels with different spoke weight distributions.
Conversely, the wheels that have been rebuilt by me and
where riders say things like "it's better than before!"
are probably total garbage.
I told the wholesaler person
"I'm way too busy so don't come,"
but honestly, if he showed up, it's obvious I'd immediately start
spilling the beans about wheels and getting into wheel talk.
I don't know if the Campagnolo people are Italian or not,
but instead of taking them to a Japanese shop,
they should take them to Saizeriya
and have them try one bite of every menu item（※）
and write up their impressions—
that would be a report with much higher value as news.
I want to hear about things like whether they got genuinely angry about Napolitan as a dish
or how even though they said just one bite, they completely finished the Doria Milanese,
that kind of thing.
※All the dishes were deliciously eaten by the staff（of the wholesaler who accompanied them）.
but the ride quality is driving me crazy.
I suspect I'm defining "disc road bike" wrong,
but I shouldn't worry about it.
The poor ride quality isn't because of the tension structure or membrane structure,
it's because of the disc wheel itself. Campagnolo's Ghibli
feels completely different from this Mavic Comet.
For crosswinds, it's not particularly sensitive,
and fitting a 50mm deep rim wheel on the front
catches my attention much more
because of how the steering gets pulled.
I think it would be dangerous on a really windy day.
The reason the front wheel isn't a deep rim is that
this Comet has a WO rim specification, and with disc wheels,
if the tire tube valve is too long,
you can't fill it with air, so having a lower rim height on the front
makes it easier to standardize the spare tube valve length.
The poor ride quality also relates to the fact that despite being nominally a 23C,
I'm running a narrow tire
on what would be considered an ultra-narrow rim by today's standards,
pumped up to 9 bar.
The tire's actual width is around 22C.
Climbing isn't exactly lively,
but it's not as bad as I expected.
On flat ground, I feel like I'm being pushed from behind,
but what's surprising is on slight gradients of less than 2%
it seems to roll forward abnormally well.
With a spoked wheel, when you apply heavy pedaling power,
first the hub deforms in the direction of rotation,
then the spokes also deform,
and only after both have finished deforming
does the rim actually rotate. But with disc wheels,
due to the structure,
the hub's rotation instantly becomes the rim's rotation,
giving it a rigid-body feel—that's probably why it feels this way.
The difference in feel between disc wheels and spoked wheels is more pronounced on slight gradients
than on completely flat ground,
so maybe that's why I notice it.
The image at the top was from yesterday morning,
in the Kazahuki Pass tunnel around 7 in the morning.
That day I ran 92km excluding the commute distance.
When I tried to turn the bike around while holding it
at the tunnel entrance,
the moment the disc wheel's surface became parallel to the tunnel entrance
（the bike's orientation became perpendicular to the road）,
I felt a wind so strong I thought the bike was lifting off the ground.
Just the bike's own weight shows how much crosswind force
the disc wheel receives.
When I got back near home, the timing was just right,
so I stopped by two wholesalers to handle some business.
At the second one—a wholesaler that's the only one in Japan
handling Fulcrum and Pinarello—
after my business, one of the people there called me over and said
that two important people, or maybe technical advisors or something,
from Campagnolo headquarters had come by,
and since their morning meeting would be done,
could he bring those two people to the nom Lab in the afternoon?
He said they want to hear about wheels and such.
I declined.
Then he asked if tomorrow（meaning today）would work,
but I turned that down too.
Looking at the Shamal Ultra DB（aluminum rim version）and
the Bora Ultra WTO,
the people at Campagnolo understand
the concept of spoke weight distribution,
even if they don't call it that.
Otherwise, they couldn't make wheels with that kind of construction.
For steel spoke wheels,
I'm confident I can build wheels that outperform most mass-produced wheels,
not just from Campagnolo,
but that's because I'm not subject to the constraint of
having to accommodate riders up to just over 100kg body weight on every wheel,
and I don't account for the individual attributes involved in maintenance like soldered joint connections—
in other words, I'm relying on what you might call a cheat technique.
Taking all that into consideration, wheels like Bora and Zonda are
wheels with substantially superior performance.
In fact, I've never rebuilt or resoldered these wheels with different spoke weight distributions.
where riders say things like "it's better than before!"
are probably total garbage.
I told the wholesaler person
"I'm way too busy so don't come,"
but honestly, if he showed up, it's obvious I'd immediately start
spilling the beans about wheels and getting into wheel talk.
I don't know if the Campagnolo people are Italian or not,
but instead of taking them to a Japanese shop,
they should take them to Saizeriya
and have them try one bite of every menu item（※）
and write up their impressions—
that would be a report with much higher value as news.
I want to hear about things like whether they got genuinely angry about Napolitan as a dish
or how even though they said just one bite, they completely finished the Doria Milanese,
that kind of thing.
※All the dishes were deliciously eaten by the staff（of the wholesaler who accompanied them）.