FatBottomedGirl

I do think we might be on the same page as far as concept and we could be apart on each of our personal gearing needs. It’s dependent on so many things like our own strength and endurance and riding preference to mashing thru spinning. Combined weight of rider and cargo is a huge factor also, and where we ride hills, flats, mountains and combinations of all.

I found a combination of using a gear computer such as this and taking note of my cadence and gears and speeds to be helpful.

http://home.earthlink.net/~mike.sherman/shift.html

Fill in all the data on what you have now as best you can and then do “What if’s”.
The other thing you can do is take note of the gears you ride in most and the ones that you may be lacking and those you don’t use. For me the goal was to find a center/ center starting point, the middle ring and the middle cog. Because I wanted a setup that would commute and also tour I was looking actually for where I would want my center/ center in both cases. For me it worked out something like 42t front and 21t back. Before that I experimented with mtn bike crank sets and looking at the graphs I was convinced I had all the gear range I needed but something didn’t seem right for me and I finally figured it out the problem was my favorite gears were split between the two rings. When I got the road crank back on and riding the whole cassette sequentially off the center ring I was much happier, but then I had almost zero need for the big ring and thought about just taking it off and putting a chain guard in its place as many have done.

I’m not opposed to cross chaining and I do it as required. I don’t have any data on wear and mileage or wasted effort, but I can say it’s very noticeable running the straighter line in the tall gears. Maybe even more so than cross chaining off the granny. I think for me it might be because I find I slightly spin more on the low gears and slightly mash more on the tall gears.

Well my point is you don’t need to change anything on your bike to start evaluating new gears as you have most of the ranges (Gear Inches) on your gears now you would have on a new setup. You just need to ride and feel what you feel and then think where would I want that gear placed in my new gear setup.

As to just getting used to something, I don’t know. We all get more strength the more we ride and less strength as we age etc. If you are expecting a big change in your abilities do to gaining strength over the short term then I would say of course hold off. If you are about where you are going to be then I would say make changes that fit your bike best to you rather than adapting yourself to the bike.