houleskis

If I were to attribute a difference between my road and track bikes, this would be it. I've considered switching to smaller cranks on the road mainly to open up my hip angle and allow me to spin more on climbs. My natural proportions mean that with 170s I'm kicking myself in the stomach a little on every upstroke when I'm in the drops. Not the most comfy.

Right now, I'm too broke from this track season anyways! There's no new road crankset in the works for me (f-ing BB30). Something to think about for the future.

Also, as an engineer, I appreciate that you did the math @taras0000

carleton

Maybe look into getting "budget" cranks or cranks made for juniors, especially if you are experimenting with lengths. I bought a set of 165mm cranks for less than $100 including BB years ago.

tobukog

I think it's pretty much becoming understood that long cranks don't give you anymore "real" leverage -- it only has an effect on gearing -- you basically just end up spinning more on long cranks (less force but greater pedal velocity) for any given power output. Because it's the lever that you push in the beginning, we somehow magically feel that it allows us more leverage when it's just one component in a series of levers/gears -- all of which determine the gearing -- and should probably be thought of as "if my pedals travel x cm, the bike will travel x cm"

This year I've gone to shorter cranks (165mm) and I feel much more comfortable pushing bigger gears (cog and chainring) and higher forces than last year. The knees don't come up as high and I'm about 1 cog in back bigger (less teeth) this year than last. I'm seriously considering going to 150mm on the track this year -- one of my weaknesses on the track is that I my best sprints are out of the saddle (Can't generate enough force at the dead spot in the saddle) This isn't that bad on many tracks but it doesn't feel great when you're in a high compression turn. Hopefully, this will alleviate some of those issues for next season.

carleton

Yeah, I'm 6ft 1inch and when using 165mm cranks, I could "run on the pedals" more and spin high RPMs out of the saddle. Couldn't do that with longer cranks.