Do carbon wheels make you faster? A ride report

[fa63]

Tires can actually make a very substantial difference, especially if you go from riding something like the Conti Gatorskin with heavy butyl tubes to Conti GP5000 (or similar) with latex tubes or tubeless.

Carbon aero wheels are more of a marginal gain for the speeds that most of us ride at.

And of course nothing beats a nice 20 mph tailwind

Originally Posted by Philster

Great light hearted post. I have some bikes, wheels and tires that always make me faster on my normal loops. I always wonder if they are actually faster or just motivate me to work harder for some reason. I’m not going to try to analyze it for fear of ruining the magic.