cwcaesar

I have a couple of monster hills near where I live. (Monsters to me, anyway.) My hill climbing gear is 39x27, and one one of these hills I can only manage a cadence in the low 30s for a certain stretch. It gets to about 18% grade for 80 to 100 meters. Most of this hill I can usually get a cadence aroung 40. This particular hill is not quite a mile in length, but it absolutely kills me. As soon as I get past this, I have miles and miles of great cycling roads, so I would love to be able to tackle this hill more easily.

I looked at the online calculators and for the same climbing speed, I would only gain about 5 or 6 rpm if I switched to a compact crank with a 34 tooth ring. Is this enough of a difference to worry about? Would I pick up some speed doe to the easier gear?

If I did get the smaller cranks, should I hang on to the larger ones incase they were needed down the road? Or just sell them to offset the cost?

I know losing weight would still be the best remedy, but I just live in a very hilly section of the country. I don't want to hurt my knees from mashing on the pedals at too low of a cadence. What would you all recommend?

mwchandler21

A compact crankset might help a little bit. Basically lowers the small chain ring to 34 and the large one to around 50. If you are riding mostly around the Highland Rim area I would think a compact would be a good investment. You'll lose a little of your high speed gear options but will gain on the low end. When you change chain-rings on you will usually have to change gears on the back 1 or 2 gears in the back to keep the same pace, but once you get used to that you'll hardly notice a difference.

Seattle Forrest

I think you could (theoretically) change out the chainrings and not the entire crank set, 39 vs 34 teeth isn't that huge a difference. But I could be mistaken. Anyway, it'd obviously be cheaper if you can get away with it.

You might instead be able to fit a 32T cassette, but this might require a new RD and chain.

Losing weight, like you said, is the best way to get better at hill climbing. Of course, the next thing on the list (before spending money on different bike parts) is to do hill repeats. It's kind of surprising how quickly they work; in a week or two the 18 % monster will feel noticeably less taxing.

Another solution is to move to Florida.

Mithrandir

I've read that generally anything below 50rpm for sustained periods of time will eventually hurt your knees.

I know I have to hop off whenever I hit around 50 or my legs will give out. I'm not sure doing a mile at 30rpm is very smart, but I am not an expert either... I just know that I couldn't do it, and that 5-6 rpm extra is probably not significant enough to bother with.

My solution was going with a 26/34 low gear. I know most cyclists succumb to peer pressure and get gearing that is wildly inappropriate for them because they want to pretend they are pros, but at some point we have to realise that only the right tools are going to help us do the job properly. Perhaps you could go with a road triple, those often go down to a 30t granny, though at 3.4mph that should still only get you around 10-11 rpm extra, at around 40-41rpm.

For reference my 26/34 lets me do 3.4mph at 57rpm. I am not at all ashamed of using mountain bike gearing, especially if I'm climbing actual mountains.

TrojanHorse

I went from a standard crank (53/39) to a mid compact (52/36) and changed my rear from 12-26 to an 11-28 and that made ALL the difference for me on nasty hills. I also have a set of compact chainrings for some day when I tackle a really formidable climb.

So - assuming 700c wheels
39x26 is 39.5 gear inches (70 rpm at 8.2 mph)
36x28 is 33.8 gear inches. (80 rpm at 8 mph)
34x28 would be 31.9 gear inches (85 rpm at 8.1 mph)

To me, I think the difference between 70 and 85 rpm is a huge and very noticeable difference. Obviously you can go slower on a steeper hill.

I did it by buying a used crank on fleabay (came with two sets of chainrings although the true compact set are pretty sorry looking) and I still have my standard cranks because frankly, I don't think they're worth much to anybody.

18% is sufficiently steep that you'll probably have to stand to get over it anyway so you may not need a super low gear.

cwcaesar

39T is the smallest ring you can get for a 130 BCD, so any smaller would require new cranks. I thougth about the larger 12/32 gearing for the rear, but rear deraileurs aren't cheap either. Oh well, I guess I will just have to go on losing weight. Thanks for the input!

I do expect to get some stronger as well as I have only been back on the saddle for about a month after 2 years off. That section oh that hill killed me when I was in better shape then as well. I will have to get a good picture of it for you.

pdlamb

If 'twere me, that bike would soon be replaced with something built for steep hills with a triple.

Alternatively, you could replace the crank (or maybe just the chainring) with a compact double, and then get a long cage rear derailer and 11-34 cassette.

I wouldn't worry about losing a bit on the high end of your gearing. Unless you're racing or riding with a very fast group, you don't need to worry about topping out at 34 mph vs. 28 mph. Anything above about 100 gear inches is foolishness -- enjoy the coast, instead. Work on your spin speed, instead.

What are these people thinking when they spec out, build, sell, and buy these beasts?

st3venb

It never stops hurting, you just get faster.

It takes time to develop a skill of climbing, and how to deal with your body in those times... best bet is to continue attacking it, and don't back down... eventually you'll pedal up it and it won't be an issue.


Till then, HTFU.

Shimagnolo

That did it to my knees.
It took a long time to recover while riding only the flattest terrain I could find around here.
My low gear for mtn climbs is now a 22/36.
And anyone who tells me "HTFU" can kiss my a**.

Mithrandir

I should note that even the pros switch to 34/27 gearing on mountain stages. The announcers were saying that a lot of the TdF riders were running 34/27 on the HC stages this year, and they can average 300 watts for 5-6 hours at a time.

So I really don't believe it's unreasonable for non-pro clydes to go down below a 34 chainring and above a 27 cassette cog. The physics alone should tell you a lot. The pros weigh, what, 120-150 pounds? At 240-300+ pounds, we're literally going to need to output twice the amount of energy that they do in order to maintain the same speed, since climbing is a 1:1 ratio between power required and weight.

Add to that the fact that most of us do 100-150 watts on average, perhaps the best of us going up to 200 watts, means that we'd need about 600 watts just to match pro speeds up hills, whereas we're capable of 1/3rd to 1/6th less power output. But do you generally ever see road bikes with 1/3rd to 1/6th lower gearing? No... we amusingly attempt to do the same things with the same, or higher gearing!!!


Lower gearing. Save the knees. We can raise the gearing when we're no longer clydes

I am personally hoping to switch my cassette from 11-34 to 12-30 when I hit 300 pounds. Still have 90 to go though.

Shimagnolo

Excellent points!
Here is what I built just for mtn climbing rides:
https://shell.forethought.net/~ryoder...e-luna-pro.jpg

Take a good look at the drivetrain:
- 11/36 cassette.
- 22/32/48 chainrings (swapped the 44 for a 48 so I have decent gearing for the road).



Edited to add: I am no longer a clyde. I was 206# at my peak. Currently around 183#.

mikehattan

Just a suggestion: ride up the hill on a bike that has a good amount of low gears like a MTB or triple chain ring and find the highest gear that gets you up that hill at a reasonable cadence. Do it a few times on a few different days to confirm it's the right one. Then calculate gear inches. Use that gear-inch value as your low-end target for your new set up. I've found gear inches transfer well from bike to bike, but I'm sure that development or gain ratio would work too.

I used it to set up my new bike this summer and my single speed last summer. I live at the top of a short but steep hill (8-10% grade) and needed to find a gear for my SS that I could actual get home with. This method worked well.

youcoming

As you ride more you will get stronger but as another poster said it will still hurt you just hurt for a shorter period of time. 18% is a big grade but at under a mile it's not sustained like a mountain. I'll be the loner and say keep what you have it's just one hill and you get over it anyway.

paisan

200w is actually at the low end of what a reasonably trained cyclist can achieve for FTP. So to say "perhaps the best of us can go up to 200w" makes me curious what you are basing your numbers on? Do you have any studies to support this, are you using numbers from a power meter, or are you simply guessing?

To put what i am saying into perspective on 19May I weighed 240 pounds and climbed from Front Royal Virginia up to Skyline Drive. On the first leg from the park entrance to the visitor center I averaged 215w over 34minutes. I wasn't pushing the pace by any means. I just climbed at a comfortable speed because I still had another 36 miles to go of a metric on the drive. My point is I am far from "the best of us" on this forum and I averaged above your 200w number fairly easily.

Mithrandir

Strava. On flat rides with my club I finish in the first group of the short rides, it usually says 125-150 watts, and I weigh 400. Thinner riders average a lot less at the same speed because they're not pulling all this weight. Then the riders in the advanced group do 150-200 watts.

This is over an entire ride, btw, hence 'average'. What was the entire ride's average, not just one 34 minute segment?

paisan

That ride as a whole is a bad example of average power because of the large amount of descending where I didnt put any power into the pedals. But my Normalized power for that ride was 205. I chose that specific example because it showed power outputs for a middle of the pack clyde during a long climb, which was relevant to your post about power while climbing. If you want to use straight average power over a long ride then a better example is the Fort Mott 80 miler I did with Isaac, Wfournier, and IBOHUNT. It was a long day of which I spent a pretty good portion of it pulling into a nasty head wind. I averaged 202w over the 82 miles and my normalized power was 259. Again I am not in the "best of" category and this is not the sole example of an average power over 200w.

For the record I am using a powertap hub to record my numbers so it is going to be alot more accurate than a highly educated guess which is the downfall of strava "calculating" power outputs. Think about all of the elevation differences that exist between the numerous sites, even between corrected and uncorrected garmin data. Hell I've seen 100ft differences between 2 different garmin headunits. Also think of all of the actual undulations you experience on long climbs that those sights can't account for. Also, how do they account for tire size, tire pressure, wind, were you in your drops or on your hoods, maybe you were on the tops. without being able to account for this data the power outputs given will always be wrong. They may be close but they are wrong.


Here is a definition of normalized power :

Normalized Power (NP)™
by Andrew R. Coggan, PhD

Normalized Power™ (or adjusted power) incorporates two key pieces of information:

1. The physiological responses to rapid changes in exercise intensity are not instantaneous, but follow a predictable time course.
2. Many critical physiological responses (e.g., glycogen utilization, lactate production, stress hormone levels) are curvilinear, rather than linearly, related to exercise intensity.

By taking these factors into account, normalized power provides a better measure of the true physiological demands of a given training session - in essence, it is an estimate of the power that you could have maintained for the same physiological "cost" if your power output had been perfectly constant (e.g., as on a stationary cycle ergometer), rather than variable. Keeping track of normalized power is therefore a more accurate way of quantifying the actual intensity of training sessions, or even races.

For example, it is common for average power to be lower during criteriums than during equally-difficult road races, simply because of the time spent soft-pedaling or coasting through sharp turns during a criterium. Assuming that they are about the same duration, however, the normalized power for both types of events will generally be very similar, reflecting their equivalent intensity. In fact, normalized power during a hard ~1 hour long criterium or road race will often be similar to what a rider can average when pedaling continuously during flat 40k time trial - the normalized power from mass start races can therefore often be used to provide an initial estimate of a rider's threshold power.

Normalize Power (NP)™, Intensity Factor (IF)™, and Training Stress Score (TSS)™ are all registered trademarks of Peaksware, LLC.

goldfinch

I have plenty of hills where I can't keep up a reasonable cadence. I just slowly pedal, trying not to push too hard. Most of the time that works out but I have had a couple of short but steep hills where I have had to mash just to stay upright. I regretted it later.

This hill I do fine. The rider surprise is that the incline continues for a mile after you reach what you think is the crest of the hill:



I am at the point where I can do this hill (the extended version) twice in a row, but the second time is tough. I have ridden this route on both the road bike with the compact double and on my hybrid triple. Six of one, half dozen of the other.

Spouse is not ready to do the hill, but he likes watching me.

Mithrandir

Look. I get that you want to be more exact than the estimates I tossed out, and as a fellow OCD'er I appreciate that, but you're completely missing my entire point.

Pros put out a buttload more power than we do, and weigh a lot less than we do. The 300 watt number I threw out is also lowballed. If you look at the power data that some pros have released from the TdF, the domestiques average 300 watts over 5-6 hours on days where they're not even trying to win, just conserve their energy for other stages. I have no doubt that they can average 400, even 500 over the same frame of time.

So the point I was trying to make was that they are capable of outputting multiple times the amount of power than we are. Even if they "only" put out 2x more power than the best of us here, you still won't see bikes with 1/2 the gearing that they do. Add in the fact that we weigh 2x as much (another innacurate, but close enough for making a point figure!), means we need to put out 4x the amount of power just to see the same speed that they do. Get it?

paisan

I agree with the premise of your post about clydes requiring more power to get the same speed on climbs and that gearing ratios do not match the power output ratios between clydes and non clydes. That's just common sense, but when you start making statements about average powers and what 'the best of us" can output it needs to be based on actual numbers not guestimates. I know this is the interwebz and this sort of thing happens everyday but we owe it to the newer riders and posters to try to be as accurate as we can if we are stating something as "fact".

Barrettscv 

I also will use a deep gear range to help me avoid a cadence below 50 rpm. My road bikes have 50, 39 & 26 chainrings and I'll use a 12-27 cassette if I'm completing a hilly century.

I try to stay seated and avoid loading up my knees. Staying seated also keeps my heart-rate in a range better suited to endurance cycling.

Jeff Pedals

goldfinch...you wouldn't have a larger format of that hill photo that you could upload here would ya?..that would make a nice wallpaper for the pc if so.

bigfred 

Off the power debate and back on the gearing topic:

I have two hills on my possible local rides that exceed 15%. One at approx. 17.5% and the other reaches 20%. Both are a *****. The 20% almost causes me to stall at the top of each pedal revolution(using a 53/39 X 12/25). On all the other hills I can climb with my normal group. But, it is these two hills that are causing me to also consider changing to a compact (110bcd, 34/50) crank.

The cadence change may not be that great, but, imagine having two more cogs that you could have shifted into at a progression similiar to what you're using. That's how I'm imagining it, unless someone tells me otherwise.

Homeyba

That's why I often use a triple. I have a bike with a std and compact double on them but I most often prefer the triple so I have the range on top and bottom. It seems like a waste to loose your top end (unless you don't use it) at the expense of a couple of climbs.

The whole gearing discussion is difficult because there is no one right answer. Everyone is different, we have different cadences, different fitness levels, we ride in different areas and we have different goals. Your gearing requirements may even change from one ride or event to another. If you can afford it, it's best to use a variety of gearing that fits the events or terrain that you are riding in.

bigfred 

Ego prohibits my adoption of your proposed solution, no matter whether it makes logical sense or not. For the sake of two hills out of all the hills in the area, I will not adopt a triple! The thing that keeps me from spending the bit of coin for a 34/50 isn't any loss of range. As has been pointed out many times 50-11 is actually a taller gear than 53-12. It's two things: One, the fact that while riding with Mrs. Fred I would find myself in the same auckward situation as her, with regard to constantly cross chaining (one way or the other) to maintain her comfortable cruising pace. Two, the increased gap between ratios, which would be completely unacceptable on my Saturday Morning Old Farts Ride. Although, at least on that ride, I would be spending the majority of my time in the big ring and several of the other old farts seem to do o.k. with a 34/50. But, on the flats, I really appreciate close ratios and the ability to fine tune cadence. Do I want to sacrifice that for "two" hills? Neither of which lasts more than 90 seconds?

redvespablur

No triple for me either. But did swap to 11 speed 50-34 with 12-29 in the back (with this combo Strava says I can pump out 225 watts over 5 hours)