Another gearing question.

[DebW]

you can count those little cogs you know. Use a piece of tape to mark your place. if you are not counting challenged it shouldn't be too difficult.

It's much easier to do with the wheel off the bike. I just leave my finger in one notch and count til I hit my finger again. As long as you don't mind one black finger.

[kelownagirl]

Counted the MTBike cogs and there were 32... It was easy. Duh.... I find the mathematical part of this really interesting...

My knees don't hurt, at least not as long as the steepest part of the hill isn't too long. I *can* get up the hills without getting off the bike but it's harder than it used to be. I guess I was expecting that hills would be easier on the road bike, not harder. I have no problem working my butt off by riding more and doing hill repeats to get stronger. I can ride on the flats here but I'm fairly limited on where I can go then. If I'm willing to do hills, I can go anywhere. Some of it is rolling, some is steeper.

Anyway, thanks for your detailed response. It really helps me to make sense of it all. Now that I have a better understanding of the differences between my MTBike and my road bike, I guess I was just wondering if I had an easy enough granny gear for my current fitness level and terrain. My SO thinks I just need to keep working at the hills and learn to use the gears I have. Sounds like he's right.

barb

[Kathi]

You don't have to count the teeth, if you look closely there's a number stamped on each ring. That number tells how many teeth the ring has. It's hard to find but its there, good excuse for cleaning your cassette!

On your crankset there is a number on each ring, for example, mine has 48-110 stamped on the big ring and 34-110 on the small ring. That means my front chainrings are 48-34. I have a compact double that's why the 2 smaller rings on the front.