Bandera

Hence:

Spinning an easy 120RPM downhill or riding a really big gear over rough surfaces at high speeds: you get to decide.
Setup as you please and proceed.

I prefer a 70GI fixed gear for many rides, a simple proposition.
You pedal the bike and it pedals you right back. Fair is fair.

-Bandera

goenrdoug

I am capable of turning 120 RPM, but I prefer not to. Much like I am capable of climbing a tough hill with a 39/26 combo, I similarly prefer not to. I find it much easier to have a reasonable/appropriate gear ratio available for the various terrain I encounter. For me, that means a 52-36 with an 11-28. I encounter a lot of mountains here in Southern California and I like to enjoy both the climbs and the descents.

To tuck and untuck and tuck and untuck over and over again can just get awkward in rollers sometimes. I prefer to meet the terrain with a relatively even degree of effort and adjust my selected gear accordingly. Obviously there are limits and one tucks and coasts at some point, but I prefer to not go back and forth, position-wise.

bikebreak

53x12 on road
46x11 for cx/commuter
42x11 for mtb
36x16 single speed cx

On my road bike I have no problem keeping up with guys running 52x11 and 54x11, just spin faster than they do. I do sometimes feel a need for the 11 on a certain long descent where I top out at 50mph

Leinster

The Eddy Merckx comparison always comes up whenever the "biggest gear" question comes up. It's as dumb a false equivalence as there is in cycling, and there are a lot of dumb false equivalences in cycling.

Eddy climbed on a 44x22. If you're suggesting that's enough for all of us to go up the Alps, Pyrenees, Dolomites and Sierra passes, Flandrian Bergs and Walloon Muurs, you're quite quite mad.

Also, Eddy was riding against guys who were also on 53x13, 52x14. If he had to compete for TT wins against Tony Martin's 58t ring, I'd say he might've considered upsizing his gearing.

Freddy Maertens used to regularly beat Eddy in classics, stage sprints etc in a 56x12. So obviously the 53x13, even back then, wasn't the only answer to every question.

Sean Kelly lost the 1989 World Championships in a sprint to Greg Lemond, partly because he didn't think the race would finish in a sprint, and opted for a 13 instead of a 12 on the morning of. So even 10 years after Eddy finished riding, the 13 was outdated.

Most of us probably have a different aero tuck to Eddy, and some of us might even decide that we want to conserve on the uphills to go all-out on the downhills (used to work for Sean Yates).

Finally, any thread like this is, ultimately, about personal choice. Not all of us want to ride with the same cadence as Eddy. If someone is happy cruising at 55rpm in a 52x11, what's it to you?

ZIPP2001

I run a 52/11 on my road bike, and a 54/11 on my TT Bike, 52/15 on my SS, 42/11 on Mountain Bike.

My TT Bike and SS Bike both are 650c with 23 tires

My Road bike is 700c with 23 tires

My Mountain bike is 26" with 2.1 tires

hueyhoolihan

there are a number of posts here that give cog and chainring sizes but no wheel sizes with tires on them. without that they information is pretty much useless. some of them also are referring to mountain bikes (could be 26", 27.5", or 29" tires), cross bikes (big 700c tires) and road bikes (small 700c tires).

as mentioned previously GI's is what's called for here. some posts contain them, which is helpful.

not to mention that some posts could have been clarified without all the unnecessary numbers.

Homebrew01

It's the road forum. Safe to assume 99% of us are riding 700c. No need to convert to gear inches in most cases, although GI is more precise.

Homebrew01

"How big a gear do you need?"

Everyone has different needs, so answers are all over the place.
The important thing is to get the right gears for the situation.

StanSeven

Right. With most bikes now have 10 or 11 gears in back and lots of gear choices, there's no need for GI. GI is really a personal thing for some when they initially select gear choices, especially with compacts. I haven't used them for years.

BoSoxYacht

Say what? No need for gear inches?

StanSeven

Yeah. In this forum we all understand what 53x12 is. No need to say that's so many gear inches. I think it's useful when selecting the cassette needed, but after that's done why the need?

steeljunkie

Thanks for all the replies. It sounds like I'm not the only one who's migrated to lower gears in the last few decades - good to know I'm in good company.

BoSoxYacht

Tire size will affect overall gear ratio, but if accuracy doesn't matter to you...

Leinster

Well again, this is the road forum, so 99% of us are on somewhere between 23 and 32c tires. The GI difference between those is slightly more than a 1t difference on a large chainring. It's not that accuracy doesn't matter, it's just that the convenience of saying "52x14" or "46x16" makes it easier to communicate in real-world-terms exactly what you have on your bike.

djb

Another person here who realised that on my 28mm tourer type bike, I just don't need a 11t and prefer the extra tooth elsewhere, I'm talking 9 speed here. I don't get to ride in long steep downhill areas often, but regularly spin out my 50-12 on downhills at about 120rpm and about 70kph. Have charts with g.ii but not nearby. That's with a 12-27

kbarch

This is what I don't understand. What is the advantage of such small increments? Surely not redundancy, but that's what it seems to approach. I've found that the increments around 7-7.5% are barely noticeable. I'd be inclined to call those useless if the alternative wasn't a single 15% jump, but even then, often enough I'll inadvertently skip over a gear and it won't matter, and there are plenty of times when it's necessary to make big jumps over two or more cogs.

In what circumstances do you most appreciate smaller steps? Flat stretches of a couple of miles or more? That's something I don't get much of....

big john

To me, the small steps are best when riding with others. Sometimes it's hard to find the right gear to go the exact speed as the group. Having more gears to pick from helps.

It doesn't matter to me what any pro rider uses, I have to use what works for me, and I'm an old, fat fred.
I have a 50x13 high gear on one bike and while it's high enough for flats, when I get into big rollers or slight downhills I want more.
I have a 52x11 on another bike, and there are times when I love that gear, Merckx be damned.

joejack951

The harder I push, the more I want closely spaced gears on flats and hills. What's barely noticeable at a relaxed pace can feel like a big loss of momentum going all out.

ThermionicScott 

They're nice on the top end, when you want to fine-tune your cadence at higher speeds. And I'm not going to lie, there is an aesthetic appeal to a tighter cassette without big cogs on it. But there is something to be said for only having gear increments that you will appreciate, so that is where this becomes individual again. Some people like and want single-tooth jumps down to 19T (or more), while others would rather make each shift count for more by that point. I'm somewhere in the middle. One cassette goes 13-14-15-16-17-19-21 and the other goes 13-14-15-17-19-21-24.

gregf83 

They're useful when you're riding at your limit fishing for any advantage you can get. If you're not riding hard having tight spacing is less important.

1991BRB1

Same here. And I use it pretty regularly. NYC region is hilly but not so much that a compact is really necessary.

djb

Buy yourself a tighter cassette and see how it feels. It's all about keeping cadence very close, just like with a close ratio motorcycle or sports car transmission, you keep the engine in its optimal power band, just like us.
If you toodle mostly you won't appreciate it, but you'd have to try it to see, you can't just read about it.

Reynolds 

That's my favorite 7sp for the flats with 42/52.

UnfilteredDregs

I spin out 111.6 gear inches fairly regularly descending and I tuck very well, I drop like a stone. Part of the reason why I'm going to a 52/36. Descending isn't a seated sprint. It is far more dynamic, at far higher speeds than flats, therefore it makes sense to have the gearing where you can much more subtly maintain speed and/or acceleration because stability is the priority. The extra cardio effort spinning that rpm descending is a waste as well.

I am by no means a master spinner, I can hold 100-110 pretty easily, my typical cadence is 95-105, I've reached 150~ at times but I'm certainly not there like a track monster, and it has no use to me other than it's something that I practice.

redlude97

Everything comes at a cost. That 11T doesn't magically appear. You are giving up another cog to have it. The extra speed you are giving up by pedaling at 40mph to maintain that extra 1mph comes at a much greater energy cost. Having the right cadence to hold a line smoothly in a group I personally put more of an emphasis on. Being able to smoothly sprint up to 140rpm+ is also more than just something to practice if you want to contest in field sprints. YMMV but just realize you aren't gaining free speed.