Originally Posted by
terrymorse
A single ring on a road bike is problematic. The speed range of a road bike is too wide.
About the only time I see folks agreeing with me that close ratios are desirable, they're talking about getting to a sustainable cadence in a pack.
That's not my use case; my thing is I like to go fairly fast, but I'm lazy. Also, my terrain is flat, and most of my riding has been done in street clothes, so I'm not after a really wide range. Getting on top of a slightly higher gear is harder if you're not in lycra, so I'm pretty well attuned to noticing what's efficient. I've always been prepared to sacrifice one or two cogs on the either edge of the cassette that I would occasionally use if I had them, for cogs I'll use often.
I invite anyone who's both sceptical of the value of close ratios, and who has a power meter and/or heart rate monitor, to have a go at skipping a gear while they watch how hard they're working.
The thing is, we shouldn't have to choose between close or wide these days; we could have like 30 efficient ratios to choose from, although there'd be some minimum overlap dictated by maximum jump between rings. It could shift just like a normal triple but with syncro, and then if you wanted a half gear within the overlap zone you could double tap the shift button. Wide, and
super close.
But nooo, front derailer bad (when they've never been better), triples extinct.