Originally Posted by
Brian Ratliff
And anyway... have fun. The kilo is probably the most intense event on the track.
And Z, you are right about a lot of things, but wrong here. Trackies work the same as anyone else. They use the same cadence as roadies when they are on their road bikes and in a road race, they sprint out of the saddle in gigantic gears just like roadie sprinters. It's just that having a single gear ratio to work with makes the game a little different, and trackies know the tradeoffs involved better than roadies.
Agreed. It's also easier to produce power at a high RPM on the track considering your cranks are usually 2.5 or 5mm shorter than on the road, at least at a steep track like me and B-Rat's where pedal strike is a concern with anything above 170 and the majority ride smaller than that.
Also, sprint events and enduro events are totally different beasts on the track. A bigger gear for a long points race certainly makes sense because you don't want to spin 120rpm for half an hour with little upper end to sprint around people, but the same gear doesn't necessarily make sense in a race lasting for the majority of people less than 90 seconds.