Quote Originally Posted by OakLeaf View Post

The point being, I'm not worrying about EXACTLY what gear development I'm getting at any particular time. I'm paying attention to my cadence and how my legs feel. So when I'm going up through the rear cogs, I'm going to be using more of them in the smaller ring, and when I'm going down, I'm going to be using more of them in the big ring.

Does that make sense, at all?
Yes it does, and I think that I've been headed that way. I've a 9-speed rear cassette, so I try to shift the back into a gear that will give me some kind of resistance for the front gear that I am going to shift into. Does that make sense? I don't want to lose speed by suddenly being in too easy a gear when I shift the front - this is a very bad thing to happen when I climbing.

He did show me what he meant by the chain rubbing the chain-ring itself, but am not good at explaining it. I asked him about that today and he said it really only mattered for those gear combinations I shouldn't probably use very often so it didn't much matter in the long run.