Should I admit defeat and go to a 30/29?



dhk said:
You're right...totally missed the "forest" here. Changing from a 30/27 to a 30/29 isn't going to mean much vs hill training. He's already got a low gear on his triple, and the small additional change certainly isn't going to make a 10% grade easy.

For a new rider, a few more months of training and hill climbing is going to make a lot more difference than a small gearing change.

I´ve got the 52/42/30 set up with a 13-25 and a 13-28 and I would not want to go lower than 28 as at that speed any slower and your better off walking .

round town there are a couple of nasty but short climbs - they are hard to walk up - and you can´t get out of the saddle with the 28 as it´s too low while with the 25 it´s possible : on a mountain bike you can pedal up on 22-28 but it´s almost impossible to ride in a straight line it´s so slow , not good if there´s traffic about and your clipped in .
 
Thanks for the replies. This is a great thread.

I'll probably do some more training before I start re-working the gears. I actually did a climb last night that wasn't as steep and I was able to stay in the middle ring for most of it. I had to jump out of the saddle quite a bit, but I did not need to bail out to the small ring until the very end so that was encouraging.

But there is no way right now I could stay in the middle ring on the steep walls like switchbacks.

I am definitely going to try some of the popular California climbs once the snow clears. Such as Sonora Pass, which apparantly has grades near 20%. That will tell me for sure if I need to go lower than 30/27.
 

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