Originally Posted by
softreset
I've never ridden in my 50/11.
See, I use my 50x11 every second to third ride. Michigan is generally somewhere between fairly to really flat, but there are some hilly spots and where I live we have plenty of short to medium rollers and there are some great drops. The dirt roads can get pretty steep in places and whenever I see a 8% or so descent I can't help myself and the legs nearly always have one good fast descent in them. The 50x11 is needed to break 40mph because while I can spin higher, my power is falling off at 110 cadence and I pick up speed when I move from the 12 to the 11T. Whatever tiny bit of extra weight I'm carrying in the 11T is 1,000% worth it for those downhills.
Originally Posted by
Spoonrobot
16 teeth is too big of a jump and both the 50t and the 34t ring are the wrong sizes for riding by themselves in most terrain. Cadence gets all blown to hell trying to drop to the little ring and then downshift twice to get to the next lowest gear and also the lower range. To say nothing of most riders being unable to get much additional performance out of greater than 90 gear inches.
To each his own I guess. With the constraint of a 50x11 top gear (see above), I "live with" a 16T chainring jump. There is still PLENTY of overlap in the gearing even then. To me, it's pretty practiced when moving up the chainring to push both shifters at the same time, going up 2-3 cogs, or to tap both shifters simultaneously, followed by 1 or 2 more taps on the right when moving to the small ring. Any cadence disruption is limited to one pedal stroke.