Do you ride/train with different casettes/ gearing?

[jmitro]

My Bianchi C2C has Shimano 105 ten-spd rear casette with 12-25 gears.
I recently purchased another set of wheels as backup, and bought a new casette to install. Without looking, I mistakenly ordered a 12-27T casette.

I live in Oklahoma (mostly flat, few rolling hills) and would rather not confuse my muscle memory by swapping gears on the casettes. So I'm thinking about eating the cost and ordering a new 12-25T gear casette.

How many people train with different gearing, and is it recommended? Again, I don't have huge hills in my terrain.

 

[An old Guy]

I usually use gearing that handles the terrain I ride on and is suitable for my condition.

I was using a 16-27 last year after an injury. I am up to a 14-25 now. I don't really care to ride over 30mph so the 14 is enough. I can handle a mile or so of 15% grade in the 25 (21 if I feel good).

I have 3 rear wheels and 2 bicycles I try to keep my gearing the same on all the wheels. But the 53/39 on one bike and the 50/34 makes the gearing different. If I go out to ride big hills I expect I will put the 27 back on all the wheels I have.

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I don't know what muscle memory has to do with gearing. A 27 just makes the hills look a bit less steep than a 25 does.

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Oklahoma has hills. Talimena drive has some nice 13% grades. After 50 miles of it a 27 looks pretty good. Northeastern Oklahoma has some nice hills. Not long but if you do them long enough a 27 feels good going home.

And don't forget a 27 is nice when you have 30-50 miles into a head wind at the end of a ride.

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In any case put suitable gears on the wheels you will usually use and if you need to change wheels it is easy enough to swap cassettes. I usually just finger tighten the lock ring - makes changing cogs easy.

 

[limerickman]

I have an old Bianchi bike 50-40-30 chainring with cassettes 12-22 which I use for training.

if I race/tour, I use my Pinarello 53-39 chain ring and various different size cassettes (depending on the amount of climbing!)

 

[jmitro]

thanks for the responses.

Sounds like it'll be smart to keep the 12-27 cassette. Speaking of......I'll have to research how easy it is to simply swap cogs and not the whole cassette. Are cogs sold individually?

And speaking of grades.....how do you determine what grade you're climbing? certain cyclocomputers can calculate that I assume?

sorry for all the newbie questions.

An Old Man.....I'm looking into a local ride called the "Dehydrator" here in SW Oklahoma in the next 6 wks. Nice to see someone else out there who knows OK.

thanks again