Originally Posted by
Glenn1234
The question to me when I read this thread is that it always seems there's some hills I encounter where the only option is "mashing" to get up the hill without walking the bike. And even shifting down into the lower gear on front still doesn't matter - it's the same force involved it seems, and spinning almost equates to mashing. Of course, add to that the winds that seem to be prevalent this time of year where you have to spin down hills and it's just not easy.
If your bike has a double, it's possibly geared too high for you, find out how many teeth are in your each chainring, and in each rear sprocket. then go
here plug in all the numbers. select gear inches, It will give you a chart of values.
Gear inches is how far you travel with one revolution of the crank, you want around 20 GI for your lowest gear, on mountain bikes 16 or 17 can sometimes be found. Some road bikes though only get down to around 25 or so.