Can I change my rear cassette to get lower gearing?

[north woods gal]

Wow! Great thread, everyone.

Emily, I have three MTB/fats with the 1x systems and love it. They have huge rear cassettes of 10-36 all the way up to 10-42s. Love the simplicity of this system, both for the sake of operation and one less thing to go wrong, plus front derailleurs do tend to be more of a headache than rear derailleurs. Don't know if the system will ever make it over to drop bar bikes, but, right now, it's taking the MTB/Fat world by storm. All my future bikes, when possible, will be 1x systems.

As for standing in the pedals, probably as a result of all my MTB work where I am up off the seat so much, I now stand to pedal quite often, even with the roadies. You do have to develop both the skill and the strength to do it on a regular basis, though. You're working a different set of muscles and so on. I find myself standing on the road bikes to mostly avoid having to shift a lot. Don't know about the rest of you, but on a long ride, I find a lot of shifting to get tiresome and annoying. Usually use standing to crest short humps or the top of hills to avoid another shift. Sounds counter-intuitive, but when I stand to pedal, even on a hill, I often shift up, not down, to be in an efficient gear. If I time it right, my speed either stays the same or actually increases, compared to remaining seated to pedal.