Big ring blues
- Thread starter bryanquinn
- Start date
Got to agree with Fixey about getting a good base of miles in before experimenting with big rings etc.
The essence of all cycling is to build your base : this means building up distances over a period of time.
If you think that you can start cycling in the big ring with only a couple of hundred miles in your legs, you’re mistaken.
Cyclists especially those that you see who cycle in the big ring are invariably experienced guys were literally thousands of hours training and racing built up over many years.
In order to acquire this base, you need to cycle in a low gear and try to maximize the distance (time) that you cycle.
Longer, slower miles (hours) will add to your foundation.
And I agree with Fixey, instead of concentrating on miles (distances), concentrate instead on trying to maximize the amount of time that you are able to spend on the bike.
It is better to cycle, for example, 4 hours at 15mph than 3 hours at 17 mph.
But before considering this, you need to build your body to allow you to cycle for 4 hours at 15 mph !
You will only be able to do this by building that foundation.
In time you will find that when you can cycle comfortably for a longer period of time, your speed and endurance will automatically increase as well.
The essence of all cycling is to build your base : this means building up distances over a period of time.
If you think that you can start cycling in the big ring with only a couple of hundred miles in your legs, you’re mistaken.
Cyclists especially those that you see who cycle in the big ring are invariably experienced guys were literally thousands of hours training and racing built up over many years.
In order to acquire this base, you need to cycle in a low gear and try to maximize the distance (time) that you cycle.
Longer, slower miles (hours) will add to your foundation.
And I agree with Fixey, instead of concentrating on miles (distances), concentrate instead on trying to maximize the amount of time that you are able to spend on the bike.
It is better to cycle, for example, 4 hours at 15mph than 3 hours at 17 mph.
But before considering this, you need to build your body to allow you to cycle for 4 hours at 15 mph !
You will only be able to do this by building that foundation.
In time you will find that when you can cycle comfortably for a longer period of time, your speed and endurance will automatically increase as well.
Wow. All this "Stay out of the big ring until you're a big tough guy with lots of miles in your legs" stuff appears to illustrate a fairly fundamental misunderstaning of bicycle gearing. The clearest way to discuss gearing is in terms of gear inches - the number of inches the bike moves forward for every complete turn of the front ring. The formula is GI (Gear inches) = (FxD)/R where F = # of teeth on the ring, D = Diameter of the wheel in inches, and R = number of teeth on the cog. If you do the math you will discover that on any typical gearing set-up there is a good deal of overlap between the gears available on the big and small rings. For example, with 53-39 rings (a very common configuration) the 53-19 gear and the 39-14 gear are both 75 inch gears (assuming standard wheel diameter). They are exactly the same gear, it makes no difference in terms of the amount of effort you must put forth to move the bike forward at any given speed whether you're in the big ring or the small one. The difference lies in the size of the steps to the next lower and higher gears and where you are on the cassette. If a 75 inch gear is pretty much at the top of your comfort range, you're better off in the small ring because you have lots of lower gears available to you; if a 75 inch gear is at the low end of your comfort range, you're better off in the big ring for the opposite reason - you have lots of bigger gears available to you. It really all depends on the size of your rings, the range of your cassette and the gears at which you're comfortable riding.
Rather than worry needlessly about which ring you're in I think it would make more sense to think about cadence. Standard recommendations are to spin at somewhere between 85 and 100 rpm (I prefer 95 to 105, people differ). Find a gear in which you can maintain the desired cadence and then choose which ring to use as your base ring depending on where your gear is relative to the point where you have to shift to the other ring, the less shifting between rings, the better. This business about prefering one ring to the other on general principles doesn't make any sense.
--Kevin
Rather than worry needlessly about which ring you're in I think it would make more sense to think about cadence. Standard recommendations are to spin at somewhere between 85 and 100 rpm (I prefer 95 to 105, people differ). Find a gear in which you can maintain the desired cadence and then choose which ring to use as your base ring depending on where your gear is relative to the point where you have to shift to the other ring, the less shifting between rings, the better. This business about prefering one ring to the other on general principles doesn't make any sense.
--Kevin
Kevin,
Thanks for your response. If you go back to the initial thread I started you will note that my problem starts after shifting into the big ring upon running out of gears in the 39 tooth ring. This only happens in a group situation, it's the only time I'm able to travel fast enough to warrent shifting up. For some reason even though my cadence stays around 100 to 105 I seem to burn out rather quickly. This is why I started the thread. I couldn't understand why even with the cadence staying high I was burning out. Not because of an use related injury as some have suggested, (but I have taken all threads into serious consideration), and want to thank all who have contributed.
What I have gathered is that the amount of miles I have put in are not sufficiant enough to susstain the use of the 52 tooth ring. Right not I am fighting an illness that has hung on for three weeks now and I am sure I will loose a great deal of fitness and will have to start at square one again anyway.
Thank you all for your input.
BQ
Thanks for your response. If you go back to the initial thread I started you will note that my problem starts after shifting into the big ring upon running out of gears in the 39 tooth ring. This only happens in a group situation, it's the only time I'm able to travel fast enough to warrent shifting up. For some reason even though my cadence stays around 100 to 105 I seem to burn out rather quickly. This is why I started the thread. I couldn't understand why even with the cadence staying high I was burning out. Not because of an use related injury as some have suggested, (but I have taken all threads into serious consideration), and want to thank all who have contributed.
What I have gathered is that the amount of miles I have put in are not sufficiant enough to susstain the use of the 52 tooth ring. Right not I am fighting an illness that has hung on for three weeks now and I am sure I will loose a great deal of fitness and will have to start at square one again anyway.
Thank you all for your input.
BQ
So keep your cadence below 100 and see how it goes. I keep mine at 90-95 but i'm an old guy who just rides.
BQ, I'm glad we've been of help to you. I fear I didn't make myself as clear as I would have liked in the earlier post. You wrote that you gathered that you didn't have enough miles to sustain the use of the big ring. With all due respect to the people who have told you that you have to have logged a certain number of miles before you can ride in the big ring, that idea doesn't make any sense if you look at the way bicycles are geared. It's like saying "I don't have enough miles on my car to go above 2nd gear." Because about half of the gears on the big ring duplicate, or are very similar to about half of the gears on the small ring, it doesn't matter which ring you ride in if you ride in this area of overlap which many people do.
Here's an example. The specific gears involved are atypical because I am riding with somewhat uncommon gearing but the idea is the same no matter how your gears are configured. My everyday setup uses 54-42 rings with a Dura-Ace 10 speed 11-23 cassette. I generally spin at between 95 and 105 cadence and my base gears (the gears I end up spending most of my time in) are within the 67 to 87 gear inch range. On my setup I can be in that range on either the 17 through 13 teeth cogs on the 42 ring or the 21 through 17 teeth cogs on the big ring. While I'm in that range it makes very little difference which ring I'm in because the gear range is the same on both of them (there are more steps between the high and low end of my range on the small ring and sometimes this makes a difference).
You said your habit has been to shift to the big ring when you run out of gears on the small ring. I'm assuming you're not cross chaining so you're shifting to the big ring after you reach the penultimate gear on the small ring. How many cogs do then drop back once you're on the big ring in order to shift up a reasonable step size? If you are moving to the big ring on the penultimate cog you should have plenty of lower gears available to you to fall back to with several of these gears being lower than the one you were in on the small ring. Riding in the big ring shouldn't be a problem if you're shifting correctly.
Part of the problem may be that you're waiting too long to shift to the big ring, you should make the shift sooner. When you move from the small ring to the big one you should almost always shift rings first and back off on the cassette second. If you back off on the cassette while still in the small ring, you'll lose momentum and get dropped like a rock. Shift into a bigger gear and then back off to the right gear and you'll maintain momentum if done properly. It may be that shifting at the high end of the cassette puts you in much too big a gear when you shift into the big ring and even though you're only in this huge gear for a brief instant, it's too much and you can't recover. Gearing isn't linear; a 1 tooth change is a larger change in gear inches in the big gears than in the small gears. For example, on my setup the penultimate cog is a 12. Dropping back to the 13 on the big ring is a loss of 10 gear inches while the move from 12 to 13 on the small ring is a loss of only 8 gear inches. Because of this nonlinearity when you switch to the big ring when you max out the small ring you're shifting into a huge gear, maybe too huge. The next time you're in a group ride you might try shifting to the big ring (and then backing down on the cassette to a comfortable gear) well before you run out of gears on the small ring. The transition should be easier. Practice and try out a bunch of combinations beforehand and see what works well for you.
All of this will be easier if you work out your gearing in terms of gear inches. Then you can see exactly what gear you're in and how it relates to the other gears that are easily available from your current position. I keep a little gear-inch table taped to my stem so I don't have to try to do the math in my head in the heat of a ride.
Hope this helps
--Kevin
As clear as ditchwater !
That's a fantastic polemic about gears - gearing.
Nothing in there that none of us don't already know, I'm afraid.
It's not as if anyone here doesn't know how gears/gearing works.
Perhaps you think you're telling us something we all don't already know ?!?!
Try reading Bryan's question before having a go at the advise
that others here have given him.
If you read Bryan's question : he states when he goes to use the
big ring that he tires after a while using the big ring.
Your advise - is, er, use the big ring !
With all due respect - you haven't got a clue what you're talking about.
Yes, 53x19 is the same as 39x14 - nothing new here, my friend.
Bryan states that he hasn't developed the power to use 53x19,
for example.
The collective advise from the group to Bryan was for Bryan to stay using 39x14 to allow Bryan to develope his strength and when he does so, he might perhaps try to move on to 53x19.
Simple advise - clear advise.
I'm not sure that is 100% correct...was always tought that the ring size effects leverage, I'm not sure of the mechanics of it but thats what I was tought, mabey someone can elaborate. How ever, I would think that Brian would be best in a gear under 75 inch. I usually start new riders in the sixty inch range and move up slowly, but most do all there non-specific riding at a max of 75 inch's and always in the small ring. There is no advantage (infact some disadvantage) to riding small gears in the big ring. I hardly ever use the 2 inside cogs with the Big ring, or the 2 outside cogs with the small. I stick with my original advice, stay out of the big ring until you do specific training after finishing a base.
Ok, I actually missed this, I asumed (my bad) that you where going to the big ring for your group rides before you "ran out" of gears in your 39. A 39 - 12 gives you an 87.5 gear (to use kevin's old method) a gear that would be quit good for a newer rider. However a 52 - 16 gives you a 87.7 gear. You may find it advantagous to start group rides in a 52 - 17 and move to the 16 as the pace goes up (I'm working on the theory that your bunch rides between 20 - 25 mph) This puts you "mid-cluster" which is always good. When I sober up (oops) and remember the formula for working out gears the modern way (in Meters) I will post it
This is a collection of a VERY bad analogy and some bad advice .....starting with
"you have to have logged a certain number of miles before you can ride in the big ring, that idea doesn't make any sense if you look at the way bicycles are geared. It's like saying "I don't have enough miles on my car to go above 2nd gear.""
Are you saying that your car gets stronger with training? It is obvious that a cars power stays relativly static while a cyclist will increase power with training.
followed by
"If you back off on the cassette while still in the small ring, you'll lose momentum and get dropped like a rock. Shift into a bigger gear and then back off to the right gear and you'll maintain momentum if done properly."
If you are in a 39 - 11 and go to a 52 - 11 you will most certainly stall, loose momentum and "drop like a rock" this I believe is true for most cyclist but is more important for begginners like Brian. This point however should be moot as I would almost never be in the small ring in a race except on the ocasional hills and I would never get as low as the 13 before going up to the Big Ring.
God,doesnt anyone just ride and change gears as needed without to much math and thinking,man o man. This is way to much sh$t.
Or maybe very experienced riders who just know what gear they need based on loads, cadence and required effort. After several decades of riding, it does get hard to describe when to shift based on a rote formula...too many variables out on the road.
Agree it's important to develop power with a good sustained cadence for endurance riding. I can easily burn out on a long ride by getting into the big ring early and working too hard. Around here with all the rolling hills, you're constantly in and out of the big ring on the downhills anyway. On the flats, I like to save the big ring for going downwind, or when the paceline picks up in the final 10-15 miles.
Actually, believe the old-school warning about never using the big ring early in the year is pretty much unnecessary now that so many are training with an HR zones and power meters.
I'm a pretty much brand new rider and I've been riding it close to 4 months now. First when I got it, I pedaled it with big gears first 300 miles (I thought I was strong enough and some reason my legs never got tired) but after that my legs got really tired and my performance went down significantly. Well.. I saw the signs of over training. After that happening, I road with small gears and put up around 1200 miles.
Fixey gave me a training program (Thanks again!) and lately it’s been showing improvement and now, I just don’t use big gears unless I go down hills.
I’m 20 year old and I’m fit. Way I see it, not every beginner have the ability to ride with big ring unless they have super natural endurance muscles. AS A BEGINNER’S OPINION, it’s not the matter of math and ratio of gears. I think beginners should ride with small ring until we gain some endurance and try to avoid over training. Because to me, over training was the biggest enemy in every sport that I participated.
Fixey gave me a training program (Thanks again!) and lately it’s been showing improvement and now, I just don’t use big gears unless I go down hills.
I’m 20 year old and I’m fit. Way I see it, not every beginner have the ability to ride with big ring unless they have super natural endurance muscles. AS A BEGINNER’S OPINION, it’s not the matter of math and ratio of gears. I think beginners should ride with small ring until we gain some endurance and try to avoid over training. Because to me, over training was the biggest enemy in every sport that I participated.
Read the context of the post "Hotshot" and give me a break. Begginers push gears they "Feel" they can handle experianced riders know what gear to ride. An example is a bunch rolling at 40kmph at the start of a hard race, a new rider might feel good in a bigger gear but an old hand knows he might feel good in it but he will suffer later if he uses it.
There is no need to work out gears on a bike, good riders no exactly what there gears are before they start, no need for a calculater during a race, but yes, most good riders use a calculater or gear chart to work out there gears. if you dont understand the context of a post probably best not to reply to it "Hotshot"
I guess the difference is a big time racer like you and then somebody like,me,just a slug trying to figure out what those round things with teeth do.
I agree with you totally.
But we had people introducing 53x19's etc.
Again, I'm old school and the only way to get used to using the big ring is to build up slowly using smaller gears.
Heart monitors/gear inches etc are good in themselves but
neither the heart monitor or a gear inch chart will get you from A to B : it's your body that gets you there.
And the body needs to be run in properly.
Small gears first - then when the ability is there to use big ring,
you then use the big ring.
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