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Old 09-08-08 | 05:06 PM
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Brian Ratliff
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Joined: May 2002
Posts: 10,123
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From: Near Portland, OR

Bikes: Three road bikes. Two track bikes.

First, go to the racing subforum (at the top of the page) and look up the sticky: "New to Racing? Here's a tip or two"

Second, do a race and see how your fitness compares. If you are regularly using the 30/27 to climb, unless you are climbing 20% grade walls, you are likely in need of some fitness during the off-season before you will be competitive in a race.

After you have started a race, you will be able to see how your gearing works for you. The most common gearing that racers have around here is a 53-39 in the front paired to a 12-25 in the back. This varies though. Many racers are adopting compact cranksets with a 50-34 or 36 in the front and an 11-23 in the rear. Very few racers have triples, though that's not to say that you should change cranksets just because of this. Mostly, racers don't use triples simply because of chainline issues with the large chainring being too far to the outside to use the big-big combo without derailing, and because there really isn't an opportunity to use the 30 tooth chainring in a race. Shifting to the 30 under duress in a race is iffy with a lot of derailments, and if you are in the 30, you are likely going too slow to keep up with the pack anyway.

So, my advice is to get a taste of, first, fast paceline riding, and second, racing, before changing any of your equipment. Once you have a taste, you'll know better of what you prefer in the way of gearing. Going from a triple to a double setup requires changing your at least your front derailleur, crankset, and bottom bracket bearing. If you run Shimano, you need to make sure your shifter is not triple specific; if you run Campy, you are fine. Right now you can find some good sales on NOS (new old stock) 9 and 10 speed parts, and if you are clever, you might be able to do the conversion for under $200.
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Cat 2 Track, Cat 3 Road.
"If you’re new enough [to racing] that you would ask such question, then i would hazard a guess that if you just made up a workout that sounded hard to do, and did it, you’d probably get faster." --the tiniest sprinter
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