Originally Posted by
Baby Puke
There is data. I believe Southern Fox linked this video, and it is worth watching:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i9DtIFi9pM
But it's not all about big gears, there's a lot in there, and depending upon your reading it would not be hard to read some of it as contradictory. You still have to roll your own as far as what you race and train on, there's no cookie-cutter template that will work for everyone.
Martin and (Povey) are great, and this video posted by Southern Fox more or less summarizes much of his views. The only thing that I don't like about the video is his part on crank length -- I've gone down to 150 -- and I sure hope more of my competitors don't see the part where he pretty much lays out the case that anyone under 5' 9" should be running under 165. There's actually a lot of research on track cycling, probably more than the road.