Originally Posted by TNCLR
exactly. riding an unnecessarily big gear on the street will give you some knee pain real quick.
only if you have knee issues to begin with or bad technique
you want a gear that you can just barely spin out on flat road no wind
I started with a 44/16, and went up from there, im at a 52/16 or 52/17 depending on which bike im on and have ZERO knee problems, and I do this for a living, ive been putting in around 275-300 miles a week for several years now, and im not some youngster at 40 yrs old either.
another often overlooked issue is the setup of the bike, I see the same bad things done by even experienced people all the time, things like saddle way too high, toe cages not deep enough, things like that, if your bike is setup wrong I dont care what you do, you ride much and something will hurt