Originally Posted by
52telecaster
man after my own heart. when the headwinds hit me this fall i was thrilled to have the halfstep. first time i have ever used such close ratios and while most of the time i didnt need to trim that closely, a few times it was really welcome.
I had an Italian racing bike that I rode a lot back in the 70s, it had half step gearing and from that I was familiar with the concept.
I decided to convert one of my touring bikes to half step (plus granny) before I rode the Pacific Coast in 2014. I found minimal benefit from half step on that trip because the grade was constantly changing by enough that when I shifted I wanted to shift more than only a half step. But for riding around home, I really liked half step for those times when the grade or windage changes by just a bit.
This past February I cycled Southern Florida (Big Cyprus, Everglades, Keys) and the only hills were approaches to bridges. The half step was fantastic because (other than bridges) the only times I shifted was when there was a very small change of effort needed due to a windage change. On that trip I do not think I every used my granny gear.
I attached a photo of one of the big hills in Everglades.
I very much suspect you guys have beefy legs that are more comfortable with lower cadences, as I've always found mid rings of 39, 40, 42 to be too tall for loaded touring, and 36, 34 and 32 rings just seem to work better for my legs for those mid range speeds we are most often going, let's say 15 to 25kph.
I usually run a cadence of about 72 to 78 on a derailleur bike, but at the end of a long day that might be down into the mid 60s when I am low on steam. My Rohloff bike has bigger steps between gears, there my cadence is usually between about 71 and 81. I do not think my cadence ever gets over 85.
Where it is reasonably flat and little wind I am usually about 12 to 13 mph (19 to 21 km/hr) when touring, yesterday when riding for exercise without a load on the bike I was usually about 15.5 mph (about 25 km/hr) on the flat, there was almost no wind yesterday while I was riding.