Originally Posted by Brian Ratliff

Put it this way, you will spend much more than 25% of your time in the first 250m. Your fastest split will be the second 250m. Your third and fourth splits will be falling off and staying on top of your gear is more important than the force you produce. With shorter gears, you are really only hurting your second split. You are dramatically helping your first split, and the damage in the third and fourth splits is minimized by your natural fall in power production after that length of time.