I said I wouldn't and was afraid my girlfriend would kill me, but the upgrade-itis got the better of me and I went got the '04 Mavic Ksyrium SL wheelset. (Put the plastic away, Hunter!)

I don't know why it is, but 3 for 3 LBS's I've gone to and have asked in general about wheelset upgrades, where I've been completely open to anything, like to place the Mavic SL's over other wheelsets. Maybe it's history, familiarity, a good pricing scheme, who knows. Mavic certainly has marketshare for the the "packaged", non custom wheelset for the average upgrade freak/weekend warrior like me. I bought into it; that's certainly fine. Many a nice, pricey bike comes with this set. Heck, it's listed on this very web site as THE most popularly viewed item.

I got them on Sunday (yesterday), and was able to get a quick 22 mile ride in. We mostly took one of the local paved bike paths that we hadn't explored yet here in the San Francisco East Bay (Contra Costa County.) The previous day, we had a much harder ride with steep climbs and decents (The Three Bears, our first time), so we were going easier this second day and started out late anyhow.

My ride is nothing too fancy, but I've been slowly falling more and more in love with it. It's a '04 Trek 2200, and of course this upgrade is darned half of what I paid for the original cost of the bike :eek: (a bit crazy.)

It could be too early, but wow the riding is nice so far.

I have about 280 miles on my bike from just weekend riding of 15 - 35 mile rides. My bike lives at my girlfriend's house which limits my riding a bit. Having had the Bontrager Race with Race Pro Michelin 23s (tires I upgraded previously), I enjoyed it for the most part and was curious as hell about upgrading the wheelset. With the wheelset upgrade, I also popped for a new Ultegra 12-25 casette and had that installed on the Mavic along with another new pair of Pro Race 23cm tires. The bike originally comes with a 12-23 HG-70 Shimano 105 cassette on the Bontrager Race rear, with Bontrager Select 25cm tires.

I got home with the wheelset and put them on my bike myself. Yah no biggie. The LBS wrote down a couple tips if I needed to adjust the low gear screw. But I didn't need to do anything. The bike shifted fine, if not smoother actually. The hardest part of the operation, was actually finding a place to secure my Cateye computer magnet to the Mavics. The Mavic battery that came with the wheels wasn't registering with my computer's pick up. I'm lucky the extra wide spokes didn't get in the way of the Cateye magnet from securing easily with out marring the spokes

The ride result is best described as smoother and more fluid so far. I have no idea why, but I felt better when in a high cadence and spinning. Perhaps the last couple ratios of the new cassette smooths things out. Perhaps pushing less weight around helps too.

Someone has a quote on this discussion board of "It doesn't get easier, just faster" by Greg LeMond. Perhaps. We didn't do any climbing to speak of on Sunday, but did the day before on my Bontragers. Yah, it is faster to crank up... but it's also like I said "smoother". It's a pretty neat upgrade.

Another stupid justification is that I got my girlfriend off her Bontrager Select wheels, and 25cm tires, and put on my former Bontrager Race, and 23cm Michelins. She rode just a bit to make sure she could shift ok, and said "wow, who knew?" I think the lower profile tires add a lot. She certainly seemed to keep pace with me very well. She has a Trek 1500.

Thanks for listening... if you want to see the progress of my madness, I bLog it here:

http://www.hunterleebrown.com/bicycling/
.. with galleries and pictures of why I love biking here in the Bay Area. It's so gorgeous and overflowing with green right now.

-Hunter