Originally Posted by
HillRider
Your low gear seems excessively low for an area as flat as Florida. It's almost as low as what loaded tourists in hilly country would have.
You could take the opportunity to buy a much tighter geared cassette that would give you smaller gaps in the interior gears. An 11x23 or 11x25 should still give a plenty low low gear and a better gear progression.
BTW, your current 48x11 high gear is 118 gear-inches with 700c wheels or 113 gear-inches with 26" wheels. Either is good for over 30 mph at a cadence of 90 rpm. Unless you are a VERY strong rider this should be plenty.
Thanks for the input,
That's good to know I'm doing the best I can up front with the chain ring sizes. So if I'm looking at 11x23 or 11x25 I'll need to be looking at Tiagra stuff I guess to get 9 speed? Will a Tiagra cassette work with my basically MTB other components OK? What should I go with in terms of 11x23 or 11x25? I never use my low gears. In fact I even thought about going single speed/X1 up front.