Anywhooo… Stetina’s bike shown below with the aero bars. Wonder if he lost power / stability or increased fatigue going for the aero advantage with that set up.
Definitely was not thinking a full disk wheel. Rather, plastic “disk wheel” covers. Rider’s who don’t want to buy a full road disk wheel for road time trials often use these “covers” to approximate a full disk. They work pretty darn well for the cost. Might be absolutely useless on mountain bike rear wheel, don’t know. Someone will try it eventually I bet.
Here is one such example of the plastic covers. Current product likely won’t just go on as the screw post fasteners are bit short for mountain bike rims. But the seller can likely sort that out for new use cases:
Yea, I’ve used one of those for tris. I think it’d rattle apart or crack from vibrations on white rim without some glue or something more to hold it together.
Maybe a Niner MCR 9 RDO with the widest tires that will fit (50mm) and aero clip on bars?
FKT’s have been around since humans could document things. Probably started when one ape used three bananas to indicate how many hours it took to travel a distance and another ape used two…
In more recent history, FKT’s have been popular in the ultra distance running world. You can look up the FKT’s on things like the Appalachian Trail for example. And then you have unsupported FKT’s vs supported FKT’s, etc. Just became more popular in cycling lately as someone else said due to lockdowns.
Rules are subjective in FKT’s. The longer the course, the less the rules matter and it is just an ethics thing. If going faster means someone hands you a gel every 20 minutes while you draft behind a car for the entire route and you just throw your trash on the ground, that wasn’t much of an FKT. If you travel 1000 miles and add an aero bar and disc wheel, and have a preplanned drop bag half way through where you drop your trash, no one will question your ethics.
