Perhaps critical to his feat were the high winds that had riders clocked at 14 and 44 mph on the out-and-back course. I guess a 44 mph wind-aided solo ride is one of the rare cases where a 54x14 pays off.
Until recently I've always ridden pretty steep gears (53/54 x 15/16) and I've pushed it into a headwind for 25 miles, and it sucked. As a matter of fact, most of my recent riding has me fighting winds above all else, and it pushed me to dig into the parts bin for a 54x20. A little spinny for me, so it adds a bit of time to my 50 mile daily, but keeps my heart rate up and I suspect the added aerobic effort has knocked a couple pounds off.
I never paid much attention to gear inches (since technically they depend on the tire height as well, and are completely different for mountain bikes), but just the ratio, since you can do them in your head or on paper if need be. To illustrate, I always rode a 16 cog, since it's a readily accessible BMX freewheel. It's wise to keep a similarly-toothed fixed, so you don't have to add/remove chainlinks, or adjust the rear brake if you have one. When I started building single speeds, most road bikes had 52/42 chainrings, so most people built 52x16. Some dug up bigger chainrings (like me) and some hunted for smaller ones. (I think that smaller ones are much easier to come by now, what with the Internet and the rise in FG and single speed bikes. You used to have to get track bolts through the mail for chrissakes, but that's another story.) In any event, I see a lot of 48s out there now, so some common ratios are:
| chainring | cog | ratio | comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| 54 | 20 | 2.7 | spinny, but nice for quick starts and headwinds |
| 48 | 16 | 3 | common track/ss gear, good for mild hills |
| 52 | 16 | 3.25 | common ss gear, a little steep for hills and sustained headwinds |
| 53 | 16 | 3.3125 | if you like it a little steeper |
| 54 | 16 | 3.375 | steeper still, usually leads to a fairly slow, but strength-building "soloflex" whole-body climbing technique |
| 54 | 15 | 3.6 | my fg ratio, good for pack speed, not for quick starts |
| 54 | 14 | 3.857143 | the gear this guy was riding |
I'll probably move up to a 3.0 ratio, using a 54x18, though I suspect I will be spinning high rpm trying to keep up on blistering group road rides. Clearly this guy has plenty of power to turn them over in a fierce headwind.
On a side note, rather than switching out chainrings all the time (since they require 5 bolt changes, and possibly adding/removing chain links) I just have 3 different cogs: 16, 18, and 20. I keep a 48 up front on the 'cross bike and a 54 on the ss/fg, so I always have a range to work with, and it only takes a freewheel bolt (or lockring tool for fg) to swap them out.
No comments:
Post a Comment