Quote Originally Posted by Kano
Someday, maybe I too will be able to be disgusted by ten miles per hour going up hill. For now I'll settle for being disgusted by four miles per hour up hill. And I'll continue to hope for getting to the point where I can be disgusted by five miles per hour up hill....
Oops, I didn't realize what I said could sound obnoxious... But you have to understand the hill in question. Let me digress a bit to clarify what I was dealing with:

We're talking a gradient of 2-3%. A grade of that small degree looks perfectly flat to the eye. During the first half of my ride, I flew along, pedaling the most comfortable stroke ever at my fastest speed ever maintained beyond a .25 mile. Then, when I turned around to head back on what looked like a flat trail, I was immediately struggling. In higher gears, my legs began to feel like lead. In lower gears, I quickly fatigued myself with spinning. To be working that hard on a hill that just plain doesn't look like a hill is what got me disgusted. As much effort as I was putting in on a seemingly flat surface, it felt like I should have been flying. The only gears in which I could turn a comfortable, smooth stroke at any speed were the ones in which I was cross-chained: the inner cogs with the big ring, or the outer cogs with the small ring. I spent that 15 miles thinking that either I need to do some serious cardiovascular work, or I need a greater range of gears-- which led to my original post in this thread.

What I still can't figure out is why I was more comfortable cross-chained when, according to the gear ratio charts discussed, I should have had similar gearing in a non-crossed combo. I think I need to take the chart from Sheldon's site and DebW's explanations, get on my bike, and run through the gears. Looking at the chart and paying attention to the different feel of each combination is probably what I need to make all of this "click" in my head.

It's funny... I've been biking for years, but it's only in the last year or two that I've begun thinking about what it is that I'm doing. Time to admit that, in that respect, I'm just a newbie