I often get asked questions like "how much faster will these wheels make me go", or "how much time will I save on my 40km of an Olympic distance tri with that funky aero helmet".

Well there is plenty of data on the net - some is good (usually when it doesn't come from a manufacturer), and  some is just marketing. There is also lots of "word of mouth" data in all shapes and colors.

The most ridiculous one I have heard is a small bike shop suggesting to a friend that for $300 or $400 he will upgrade his wheel and bottom bracket bearings to ceramic bearings, and that will give him an additional 30-40 watts of power. It takes a huge amount of proper training to increase your power by 40 watts, so at $400, that's the deal of the century.

I remember reading an article on aero wheels, and generally with 1-2 watts of power, you can spin a wheel that has ordinary bearings at 40km/hour. So if those ceramic bearings are 50% more smooth than his existing good quality Mavic bearings, the best case would be a savings of about 3 watts for both wheels and the bottom bracket. With good quality wheels and bearings, I'm not even sure you'd even save one watt. A much better value here would be to get tires with lower rolling resistance the next time you need to change your tires.

You have to be quite hard core to consider changing your bearings, or using oil instead of grease in cup and cone bearings. If you are going down that road, I hope you aren't the typical triathlete but rather the monk who keeps his chain ultra clean and well lubed. Ceramic bearings and a dirty drivetrain - that's the perfect couple.

A lot more common are questions about wheels. In a triathlon transition there are so many deep carbon rims, disc wheels, tri spokes, that make you feel like an odd ball if you have aluminum wheels. It's quite sad that many of those wheels never spin above 40km/hour.

So here is another friend, 50+ age grouper, who wants to get faster on the bike. I'd say an above average triathlete, he can maintain a 36-38 km/hour average on a 40km bike leg. So he's sending me emails with links to second hand wheels so that I can help him find a good deal.

After a week or two of searching, he asks me how much time he's going to save. First you you have to look where you're starting from. He's riding with 30mm aluminum rims, with a low spoke count, probably around 20/24 bladed spokes. When you look at manufacturer's data, they usually compare their wheels with a 32 spoke boxed rim. You'll probably read somewhere that a disc and a deep dish front would save in the order of one minute on 40km. So compared to already reasonably aero 30mm wheels, I would think the savings would be in the order of 30 seconds. And I'm not sure you'd even see those types of savings if you're averaging 35km/hour to begin with.

So when I told my friend to expect gains in the order of 30 or so seconds, he reasoned that the $1000 dollars or so he was going to spend, should be spent somewhere else. Especially in a triathlon, where a 30 second advantage on the run doesn't make you out of sight of a potential competitor. The mental toughness difference between similar runners will make a larger difference on the outcome. If there is a 30 second gap between two runners at the start of a run in a triathlon, and the runners are of equal strength, chances this will be a sprint for the line.

In a time trial, things are different. You don't know how close or how far you are from the competition. A half a second difference can be the difference between a silver or gold medal, or a spot on or off the podium.

At this years Provincial time trial, I finished third 2 seconds from second place, with cow horn handlebars, clip on bars, and regular road shifters. It's possible that with an aero cockpit and bar end shifters I would have saved 3 seconds on 20km TT. The first place was 30 seconds away, so on 20km I don't think any equipment change would provide such a large advantage when the bicycle already has deep front wheel, disc wheel, and and aero Kestrel Talon frame. I was more happy finishing third by 2 seconds, than I would have been finishing second or fourth by 2 seconds.

The bottom line is, yes, in a time trial equipment does matter quite a bit quite, but once you've got a reasonable aero setup, the equipment cannot become an excuse - if I would have wanted to be 2 seconds faster I just had to train harder and smarter.

I did a few experiments this summer. On the Beaconsfield club 15Km TT's I tried different setups. Different wheels (Zipp 404, 808, trispoke, disc), different frames (the Kestrel Talon versus the Airfoil), and different cockpits   (Vision integrated, cow horns + clip-ons, and drop bars with clip-ons). The time differences were always in the order of 10 seconds when compared to other riders no matter what equipment change was done. Not scientific, but it confirmed my thinking that the equipment is important, but not that important.

Don't expect large improvements by upgrading your equipment, no matter how much you pay for that equipment. The real question is not how much faster those zippy wheels will make you go, but rather how much poorer will you be?