Originally Posted by bfloyd
LOL!!! The area I live in is very, very hilly. It seems that I am either going up or down, no flats. When riding my geared road bike and testing to see what gear will work best for me for a single speed, I seem to need a 42 x 21 to climb these hills and if I went one gear higher I would probably have troubles. I also don't want to introduce any knee pain. The thing with that gearing is that on the little flats that we do have I seem to be spinning like crazy. Perhaps I should just except the smaller gear and work on my spin for the flats? Is a lower gear higher rpm better on the knees that a larger gear with lower rpm? Again, I feel that a fixed would cause me problems on the downhills because of the smaller gearing. I don't think that I would be able to maintain a 160+ leg rpm
Thanks for all the advice.
compromise is key, and bmx cogs are cheap, so you can try different ratios until you get something you like. for a very, very, hilly area it seems like you're destined to do some spinning, which is not necessarily a bad thing. i'm no expert at any facet of cycling, but the hardcore roadies at the local bike shop are always talking about raising their maximum cadence and sustaining it for longer.
and without directly contradicting those who know a lot more than i do, i can say from my experience the lower the gear, the happier the knees. i find that using a tall gear on a single speed (freewheel) bike does much less damage than using the same tall gear on a fixie. most of the knee strain (on a fix) seems to happen when i'm slowing down. hope that helps. good luck!