Anyone Here Ever Outgrow Their Big Ring?
 

I went from always being on the 39 to always being on the 53 in a fairly short amount of time and I'm wondering if anyone here has had to add some teeth to their big ring after a while. I hit a tailwind and was comfortably on 53-13/14 and it occurred to me that in a few months I'm going to run out of teeth on the big ring. So, I'm wondering if I'm full of it or if this would actually occur.

If this does happen, would I go down from a 12-23 cassette to an 11-21 or do I try to find a 54 tooth ring? I'm not even sure if there is an fc-7700 b-type 54 tooth ring so I must be missing something here. Maybe I just start to adopt a faster cadence at that point? You veterans must need something like that for flats and especially downhills I would think.

Any thoughts are appreciated.

Work on your cadence. If the big boys don't need a bigger ring most of the time, you don't either. You're probably not spinning well enough.

Cadence only counts one crank, right?

It's Revolutions per minute. So it's one go around not half of one, if that answers your question.

Well then I'm only doing a little over 60 usually. It's so uncomfortable to go higher than that and it always seems to slow me down. For example, today I only had one guy pass me and I let him go about 30 feet ahead of me and then I locked on him for about 4 miles and I experimented with some higher cadence spinning and it always made me fall back off of the pace. I don't understand how I could increase cadence without lowering speed.

That's why you gotta work on it man.

find some hills. climb them.

Ouch. Looks like we got a case of the Jan Ullrichs - got a velodrome nearby?

For most riders ideal cadence should be 90-100. You need to learn to spin the big gear, as Eddie Mercx put it. The reason for this is you can mash for short distances, but over a long ride, say 80+ miles, you need to spin in order to rest your muscles. If you don't spin, you'll run out of gas. You need to learn to spin and mash and keep the same speed.

I can go 25mph and stay in the small ring (not exactly comfortable but still), so it's likely that your power distribution is focused too heavily on the downward part of the stroke

60rpms will lead to premature knee wear sooner or later, try one-legged pedalling drills to get a taste of the suppleness required

Yeah actually, Alpenrose. I need to go there and drope teh hammar.

I wouldn't say that I'm mashing it. I was in the same range of gears for most of the 28 mile ride I just did. I'll try to force myself to do 80rpm next time and maybe take less HGH.

60rpm is mashing it. 80 is about 4 rev per 3 seconds. If you don't have a cadence meter it's easy enough to count that. Keep it around 80 and you'll be fine, higher if you can get it comfortable. If you bounce too much at high cadence there is a chance that your saddle might be too high.

I think something that would really help me out is riding with someone who has a 100rpm cadence and try to match their strokes. I'll have to dig someone up for this.

you can always buy a cadence meter, they aren't horribly expensive and in the long run will be very useful since durring the winter months you can practice your cadence on the trainer/rollers.

That's not a bad idea...thanks a lot.

What really helped me learn to spin when I first started riding was concentrating on my knees moving up and down smoothly. Not thinking of pedaling as a hard push down on the pedal each time but thinking using leggs like pistons. I'm guessing this doesn't make sense but try thinking up down up down rather than push push push.

Then I got a Cateye Astrale 8 and really practiced keeping myself at atleast 90rpm.

get an 11. Bigger chainring means the drop to the 39 will be too much; also, if you go too big, I think you may have to get a front derailleur with a bigger cage

There are 54T chainrings for TTs, but as others have said you would be better served by learning how to pedal properly. Your knees will thank you.

Lockout your front derailler and spend a week riding the small ring. That may help you to spin faster :) After that... the 53 will feel massive!

53x12 at 100rpm is 35.3 mph. If you find yourself spinning out of that, you won't need to worry about the teeth on your big ring. The team mechanic will be taking care of it for you.

There will be no droping of hammars until you're comfortable at least to 120. But nothing will teach you to spin like being stuck in the equivalent of 39x12.

+1. My single-speed is geared to a 39x17, and I can pedal that to about 22mph on the flats (not exactly comfortable to hold it at that cadence for any length of time, but it can be done).

You can go substantially faster in your 39-ring then most people think you can. As DanielS said, don't use your big ring for a while... when you can cruise at about 20mph in your 39, start using the 53.

Beat me to it.
+2

A 13 or 14T is not that small for a small cog.

If you get an 11 or 12 you'll find that it'll be much harder to spin out the gear, but on long descents or in severe tailwinds you'll be thinking of bigger rings once again.

To calculate relative gears, you can do the following:

Chainring/Cog x wheel diameter (use 27" as a standard for 700c).

This gives you a sort of abstract "gear inches". For comparison purposes (it's sort of a given that you'll be using similar tires and wheels) it's good for deciding if you should get a 12T or a 55T.

From a more intuitive level, going from a 53T to a 55T is about a 5% increase. Going from a 13T to a 11T is an increase of about 15%. It's much easier to increase relative gear size by going to smaller cogs. The problem is that small cogs are not exactly round (imagine a 2T cog, or a 1T cog) so smaller than 11T and the cogs gets sort of oblong (9T cogs are out there for the Alex Moulton style bikes).

To give you an idea of how significant cog size is relative to chainring size, a 42x12 (or 39x11) is about equal to a 53x15, i.e. only a cog away from that 53x14. Someone I know got 5th in a Cat 4 race (flat/downhill sprint) while sprinting accidentally in his 39x11. Since that was my Junior gear limit it's not necessarily a "little" gear but it's definitely smaller than a 53x13 or 12.

Although a lot of folks will give you flak for wanting higher gears, I find that higher gears do help in tailwinds and in fast moving fields. I'd rather keep my cadence at some normal rate and still be able to move up at high speeds (mid 40s). I ran a 54x11 for a long, long time, sprinted in it even in slight uphill sprints (but with a very fast leadout), and used it regularly when moving up in the field. It's certainly easier than spinning like mad in a 53x13, and it's safer if you're in a group (spinning like mad will always reduce control of bike - try looking back or taking a drink from a bottle or avoiding a pothole or bumping another rider at 140 rpm).

cdr

+1