You are a wise woman. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Aggie_Ama
I fall in love with my little bitty gears all over again when I'm "trying" to ride at 10,000+ ft.
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You are a wise woman. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Aggie_Ama
I fall in love with my little bitty gears all over again when I'm "trying" to ride at 10,000+ ft.
One of the routes I routinely do has an upward trend for about 7 miles. It takes me about 25min. I am pretty much the only one I know who races on a compact crankset. My teammate with a triple on her WSD bike never touches her granny ring or the top half of her cassette when she's in the middle. For my "corner of the universe," I use easier gears than the average rider. I also was getting advice on gearing from good climbers. My conversation with them was about determining a rig that I could take with a friend to the Bay Area, for example, and survive a full day of riding. FWIW, racers would never race on anything close to a 1:1 gear ratio. They weren't advising me on how to race out in Cali, but what they thought was the lowest practical gear combo I (or anyone--in their opinion) ought to put on a climbing road bike. The only ultra-distance cyclist I know who still does those rides (she does things like rides out to and climbs Mt Etna on her bike) runs a standard crankset and something like an 11-25 in the back. She's a billy goat.Quote:
Originally Posted by SadieKate
Based on Aggie's latest post, maybe the rest of you are more on point than I was. However, it wasn't totally clear from her original post what she was climbing exactly. I also feel like there's some huge war going on between those who use light gearing and have to make mountain bike component modifications and those of us who stick with more stock setups. Most of the time here, the latter group is being attacked by the former (who somehow feels as though they've been attacked first). You all take it too personally. Just because some of us advocate one approach doesn't mean that we're saying the rest of you don't deserve to be on road bikes. Good grief.
In addition, many of my comments (here and on violette's thread) take cost into account. That is something I consider strongly when making component changes. What's the easiest and cheapest thing to try out first? A cassette that will work with no other changes. Next? Depending on the group, either going for smaller rings or something like the large range cassette. Because of my place in the sport, I wouldn't consider a mtn bike cassette personally, but I could get pretty close if I ran Campy, so I still support cassette and derailleur changes. Lastly, the most cost would involve an entire group overhaul (from double to triple or from shimano to campy or whatever).
Since the OP doesn't do the monster climbs very often, I figured she'd want a change that I'd advocate for newer riders. Go with an inexpensive change that will let you hang on, and if you want to do that type of riding more often, then go with the next level of change if you don't just get better at it from practice. There's also the consideration that a good climbing rig might become kind of annoying for the more frequent rides on flatter ground, especially if you remove some of the harder end. Remember that part of the question here was if she was going to lose much high end for descending. That means she'd like to optimally keep her big ring and some high end on the cassette.
Wow. I just read this thread and I'm a little baffled at the ruffled feathers. I saw lots of good advice, well documented and politely given, based of course on the experience of the person giving it. If I had trouble with a 1:1 ratio then I wouldn't recommend it either. As it is I haven't a clue what kind of ratio I ride but that's why I haven't been giving any advice either.
Please, gals, I think it's all good.
lph, since you feel the need to rehash this, I took issue with the "most people don't need" statement.
She was delivering a blanket pronouncement based on her own limited experience and her own particular set of circumstances, hardly a basis on which to determine what "most people" need.
But glad it didn't ruffle your feathers any.
I hear you jobob, and I know it can be irritating when people make blanket statements. But in my opinion it was carefully and well put, and fodder for a good discussion, not inflammatory or condescending. From the point of view of a relative newbie to the cycling community: this looks like a "hot topic" I didn't know existed.
Since others here ride a similar stock set up here is what I went with. I changed the 12-25 cassette to a 12-27 Shimano cassette. The LBS said Shimano doesn't recommend going to 12-28 probably just cause they don't make it but whatever. My goal was keep my Ultegra Rear Deraileur, giving me one more easy gear and keeping it cheap. I may end up looking into other options because I am pretty sure this won't be enough but I want to try it before dropping a lot of money. Right now I am only out $100 and have some more time to decide what I want.
Right now it only once a month or so that I get to enjoy these climbing quad busters, so it seemed silly to drop a lot of money on switching to a mountain set up. My budget was low right now because I am not completely ready to commit to changing so much.
My bike is now:
105 Front
Ultegra Rear
12-27 Ultegra Cassette
Let us know how you like it. I'm strongly considering the same change to my bike.
I run a 30/40/50 12-27 combo. It started out as an experiment but after a while, I fell in love with it. A 17% climb will still suck, but you'll have a great combination of gears for almost everything else.