i was running 52x15 and it KILLED my legs lol.

I'm running 54/16 (91") on mine and love it. Yes, it's flat here in FL.

49-19 for my do-everything bike, 13mph on the hills.

I will ride a 46-16, and I live in a pretty hilly area. I say I will ride because I haven't gotten all the parts I need to finish building it. It'll be done by the weekend.

omghi2u!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

42 x 14, good gear for so far. 42 x 16 was too much spin for the group rides I do. I can still mash up some east bay hills, and tuck in the pace line.

But as other said, I push a much larger gear onmy fixed than on my roadie bike. my cadence on my roadie I keep 95-100rpm. On my fixed, I like 75 -80rpm.

42:13 is a freaking steep gearing for any day to day riding unless you live in a place that is perfectly flat and where the wind never blows.

I run a 52:18 on my road bike and folks here think that's pretty steep (77 gi) since we do have hills and the wind never stops blowing.

My fixed folder freaks people out as it runs a 52:14 and although the gearing looks massive, with the 20 inch wheels it only works out to 69 gear inches and there is a 16 tooth cog on the flip side for those really windy days. :D

If I were you, I'd go for a 48/19 ratio. I think you'll find that 48/20 feels nice coming out of red lights and on gentle uphill slopes, but then it starts to be frustratingly slow on the descents. I ran 32/13 (somewhere around 65") on my first fixed gear, and that ended up being a good way to learn to really spin, but I've since moved up to 46/17 with a 14t cog on the flop side, originally put there because I meant to get to the track in San Jose, but now it's mostly just for ****s and giggles.

I settled on 46/17 after going on a few more significant rides (10+ miles) with 32/13 and got really sick of spinning like a madman and not going fast for miles at a stretch. It also really made my knees sore, although that might have been the cumulative effect of fast spinning down the hill and mashing a slightly-too-high gear up it. I think if I were to do lots of longer rides on my fixed gear (mostly use the multi-geared bike for that), I would maybe go with 46/18 on one side for general riding and 46/15 on the other, since my track ends seem to be able to take up about a 3 tooth difference. As it is, though, in my day to day riding I don't have time to flip a wheel. 46/17 is a good all-around compromise ratio. The only time I flip the wheel around to the 14t is when I leave the Bike Co-op on the UCSC campus to go home. It's all downhill, and at 86" (with 23mm tires and 165mm cranks) it gets fast.

Thanks all for the advise - clearly there is a lot of difference based on preferences. Deadforkinglast - I suspect you have the right answer. Especially if i ever start doing skip stops (19 vs. 5 patches). As a 50+ year old who rides since his knees are not happy running, pushing a low gear sounds risky.

Now back to our originally scheduled thread...

34MPH at 120RPM!

I run 42/16 for a moderately hilly area and it has been good to me