Originally Posted by
02Pilot
Personally, I'd keep riding it as-is until you get to the point where the 48 big ring isn't big enough (or you wear out the chainrings), then switch over to a road crankset. If you're not out of gears top or bottom, there's no need to change anything. Of course, I ride (among others) a bike with a 1x5 drivetrain in the undulating terrain around here, so maybe I'm not the best one to speak about fine-tuning gearing.
That is indeed also a possibility. I guess the problem I'm running into is that the 48 may have been just a bit too tall for me, but as you said there's still room to grow into it.
I just don't want to run into the situation where I have to constantly switch between mid and big rings because my legs have now increased into an overlapping range. I used to do that a lot on my old MTB and it didn't annoy me then, but these past 8 months being stuck in mostly 1 ring has opened my eyes to how much easier it is to ride in one ring.