frenchyge said:I don't see any contradiction there. Swampy said he did his testing on a fecking steep and long hill and found that the longer cranks performed better. I said that I could see performance improving on a hill where the bike was originally overgeared for the climb, but then longer cranks were used (instead of more appropriate gearing) to shorten the overall drive ratio. Swampy is notorious for prescribing huge gear work, so it doesn't surprise me that he would test his ideas in an overgeared situation. That's hardly an endorsement (on my part) for using longer cranks in the majority of cases where the range of available gearing is typically suitable. It makes a lot more sense to me to adjust the drive ratio by changing the cassette or chainrings than the cranks, but I like to do things the easy way whenever possible.
I test where I need to see results of where I'd like to improve. I also test to see what allows me to go faster for a given situation. IF I end up time trialing at 80 to 85 rpm it's because I tested several times at that part of the season to see what allowed me to go fastest for my state of training. Thankfully my coach was openminded as well as being very, very good.
On that occaison the testing was on a steep hill but the results seem to correlate fairly well when looking at time trial results on the flat where I posted a few personal bests. I'm not sure that I would have topped 29mph for 10 miles on the shorter cranks... Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn't, maybe I'll never know. Over geared? Not really. I could have used smaller gears on the flat and back then I could quite easily get up 12+% hills on 39x21 let alone the 25 I probably had on the block back then.