Old road bike: 2x10 50/34x12-36 originally it was 53/39x12-25, climbing was hard.

New road bike: 3x11 52/39/30x12-29 or 11-25 (training/climb or race/flat)

Gravel bike (drop bar mtb): 3x10 46/34/24 x 12-36 or 12/27 (hills/loaded, or flatter/unloaded) but with 60mm tires, makes gearing 9% heavier

Fixie road bike: 49x17 fixed most of the time, but I have 16 and 18 too. I can climb some of the hills with it too, but that involves lots of pain.


I do use gears that low, and I have spent lots of time looking at gearing charts at bikecalc. On the new road bike I'd get a smaller granny to live with only one cassette, but smaller BCD is 94mm, so I'd need a new crankset for that.

I'm about 61kg, ftp some 280w. Not that weak, but there are some steep hills that I enjoy climbing with at least 80rpm with the road bikes

To match those ranges with 1x I'd probably have to ride with a 11-50 cassette (mind the gap).


But on a TT bike, and flatter courses, I might be fine with 46~ x12-29.

I wouldn't want to use a TT bike for climbing steep hills anyway.


If I could know for sure that bigger gaps wouldn't make me slower, I'd be ok with 1x on the road really, especially because it lets me get q-factor narrower, and mess with oval chainrings, shorter cranks, etc.

I guess I'll have to test myself on a smart trainer to compare. I might as well need a decent test protocol for that.