girlcyclist

Hi, I'm 16 years old and have been cycling on the road for 9 months now, after inspiration from the 2012 Olympics. I decided to have a go at track cycling about a month ago, and enjoyed it so much I joined a Junior Track Club in Manchester. I quickly progressed through the groups to my surprise and am now riding in the top group, but still using a rental bike...I've been told I need my own bike to race, and that this will be very soon, I would also like my own bike due to the added benefits of not setting up saddle height every time, having the wrong gearing etc....

Anyway, I've been saving and its my birthday soon so I'm able to get myself a Track Bike. I've had a look around and got advice from other riders, coaches and found that the 'Dolan Pre-Cursa' seems the most popular, and best value for money. (I'm wanting it to last a while and Dolan also seem like a fairly reliable company). This is the bike: https://www.dolan-bikes.com/track-bikes/alloy/Pre Cursa Track Bike?product_id=662

One thing I'm not sure about however, is the sizing/gearing...

I'm 5foot 7inches but have long legs...
There are a lot of different options for size on the Dolan site, but the 3 I'm unsure of are 'Stem Length'- how long should a stem actually be for track?, 'Crank length' and 'Handlebar size'- should the bars be narrower?

Also, the gearing...the rental bikes have '50x16' gearing, I'm guessing the 50 is the chainring size, and 16 the sprocket size? (unsure on the terminology!)
I've found the rental bikes to be slightly high geared, I have a tendency to spin my legs fast, in a smaller gear on the road, (hardly ever coming out of the small chainring) but I can still keep up with men pushing the hard gears and it just seems to work best for me, and I feel I could go faster, and not tire as quickly with a smaller gear on the track,
The options available on the PreCursa are '46T', '48T' and '50T' for chainring size...but nothing mentioned about sprocket size?
I'm unsure of which would be best for me.

Any help would be very much appreciated!

highonpez

Ideally you're going to have a couple rear cogs to switch out as you see fit, so you shouldn't worry much about those sizes yet. I'm not a track dude though, so I'm going to shut up and let people who know things give you advice.

prooftheory

Duplicate post dude. (also a duplicate in the track forum.)

highonpez

Yeahhhhh. And you posted that before I even finished reading the thread with the posts in it.

Mod cleanup on aisle 4?

hairnet

Girlcyclist, you were correct to post in the Track forum so let's keep it there.