hi there. well er stat stats stats.. just a quickie with merckx.. in those days(1960) we followed the TREND of the pro's. rings we used were wait for it 54.X 46 and we used 5 speed block of 13.X23 or 25.. big gears by todays standard.. if you road TT you had a close ratio block of 13x17/18.. all good stuff.. what we must remember is that 10 speed blocks was man on the moon stuff, just did not exist.. the testing before gears came in was all on fixed... you rode THE gear of 88, and at 100 rpm you beat the hour by 10 seconds...alf engers held comp record at 25 miles with a 55.11, along came charlie mcoy of the melling whs and did a 55.01 on gears then it was all gear stuff,, until Chris B and G obre smashed the 10/25 on 110 fixed.. BUT no one change back to fixed except a small few... WHY, well the punters like to be seen £3000 carbon bikes to do a 1.3 in the local club event.??????????????????limerickman said:To put a bit of perspective on the gearing : I did 103 miles on Saturday and 103 miles the following day : I used a 42 chainring, with a rear sprocket cassette 13-26.
I have a 53 chainring also but I never use it).
I did the first 103 miles in 5hrs 23mins : I used 42x17, 42x16, 42x15 for the majority of the route and went in to 42x13 sparingly.
Just looking at the what I wrote in my training record : and it says rpm (on the computer) averaged 96 rpm for the entire duration.
For the return trip (the following day) same gears were used.
It took me 5hrs 31mins to complete 103 miles : rpm average 97.
Again, I didn't use 42x13 much (except for descents).
The route I took, had mainly long drags instead of climbs.
And I'm only what would be considered a tourer, these days.
5hrs odd for 100 miles isn't bad going all the same either.
There is no need for the bigger gears, I think.
56x?????? is far too heavy a gear.
Merckx used a 44 in his day, I believe.
Don't know how true that is.
your milage's are very impressive, keep it up, but remember with big distances, you tend to roll along all day at that one speed, when you meet up with the BOYS, and they jump up a small drag or sprint out a bend,, the legs cannot respond, you need now a bit of speed work, say one night a week with the chain gang,, 40/50 miles.. ON THE FRONT>>>
why not take out that vets licence... its another world..bon courage..