taras0000

Keirin grips are the best in my opinion. Yoshida makes them in different thicknesses, the thinnest ones being 1mm thick, and I don't think you will be able to get that thin with anything else barring maybe one layer of cotton Hockey tape. This may be the best solution for someone with smaller hands, as going thicker will make it harder to grip effectively during standing starts. I liked SOYO grips as well. They were 2mm thick, and had a file pattern to them that offered great traction, with or without gloves.

Yoshida are available in just about any colour you can think of, with a sparkle variant of each one.

Pro tip: if you're really good at installing them, you can get the clear ones, and slip them over sponsor logo stickers that you place on the bars. Hairspray is the easiest way to pull this off, although it can also be done by "burping" them on with an air compressor and a really fine wand.

seau grateau

Any sage advice on how to choose gearing for different events? I finally made it out to race the other day and realized I was way undergeared, so I ordered some things to expand my gearing options. I'm figuring it'll take a little experimenting with different combinations to see how they feel on the track.

carleton

Cadence.

There is a sweet spot range of cadences that your body likes. Strive to find it. Once you find the minimum and maximum cadences, you will use your gearing to put you there.

This is how you adjust for variables such as:
- Barometric pressure
- Fluctuating weight
- Early, mid, or late season fitness
- Energy levels (how rested, fed, and hydrated you are)
- Etc...

Once you figure out where you want to be, then you gear up or down accordingly.

This is what experienced racers mean when they say things like:

Over-geared:
- "Couldn't get on top of the gear"
- "Behind the gear"
- "Bogged down"
- "Sluggish"
- "No snap"

Under-geared:
- "Spun out"
- "Spinning like a hamster"
- "Too light"

For sprint events, I would test where I am with my warmup jumps on race gear. If I'm under my target max RPM, then I would go down a tooth or two. If I'm over my target max RPM, I'd go up. Now sure how enduros would test it out for mass start events.

The upside of using short cranks (e.g. 165mm) is that it extends that sweet spot cadence range say from 110-125RPM with 172mm cranks to 110-140RPM with 165mm cranks (don't quote those numbers, just offering them as an example).

If you have a lot of files, maybe look back on some of your good performances and see what the mid and max cadences were. Same for poor performances.

If you don't have any files, maybe invest in a head unit that records speed and cadence and allows you to download for analysis.

carleton

If you analyze videos of mass start racers, or watch in person, you'll see the same cadences pop up.

For example, I was once watching a US pro take a lap solo at TTown in a points race. I can't recall the guy's name. Pistachios kit back in 2012. Anyway, to gauge his cadence, I would use the timer app on my phone and then watch 1 leg and count 10 full revolutions. Like, every time his let hit the 6 o'clock position.

"zero" (start stopwatch app)
"one"
"two"
"three"
"four"
"five"
"six"
"seven"
"eight"
"nine"
"ten" (stop stopwatch app)

Let's say I saw "4.5s" on the stopwatch.

I'd open the calculator app and enter:

600 / 4.5 = 133RPM

You can do this while counting any number of pedal strokes. But, counting 10 eliminates a good bit of user error but isn't too long such that the rider has gone past you.

This (obviously) also works when watching riders on replay videos.

Now you know how to figure out what cadences the pros are riding

seau grateau

Good stuff, thanks! I really should invest in some gear for tracking my speed and cadence. That'll probably be the next purchase.

Baby Puke

For gearing, if you're a sprinter one method is to spend a day doing flying 100's, going through a range of gears from smallest to biggest. (of course full rest between will be required, so could be a long day at the track) Which one was fastest, and what was your max cadence? That should be your gear for 200, and then you can adjust from there to get the correct cadence range for different races. For example, my 200 gear is my biggest, but my kilo gear is generally only one tooth down from that, and the gears I use for sprint rounds will be smaller within a short range.

southernfox

...and note that that gear is track, weather, and fatigue-dependent!

Colder, more humid/high pressure, or tired all mean smaller gear.

Dalai

Then indoors or outdoors. Size of field, race type and length etc...

sarals 

For me, a flying gear start is larger than a standing start gear. I loose a little top end in the smaller gear, but I get out of the hole and up to speed quicker. Too big a gear and I accelerate like a bulldozer.

southernfox

This is true for 100% of people. No one does a 200m on a gear smaller than their 500m gear. I do my 200s on 110-ish, and my 500s on 98-ish

carleton

[raises hand]

I do.

...and many others do, too.

carleton

Remember, for time trials, average speed is the key metric, not top speed.

sarals 

sarals 

taras0000

I'm in the same boat. I always sucked at qualifying, didn't have as high a peak speed as others, but was great at accelerating from a standstill or slow roll. I also didn't drop off as fast as the peakier guys. Not the best choice to be Man 2 in a TS, but great at book-ending a team.

Venturing a little biy away from ET, for people like us, gearing and dialling in the approach for an F200 is more important than for others. The biggest thing I found for me was extending the time I spent getting back into the saddle. When I started doing this, my times got better, but as soon as I went too long, BAM! it slowed down again.

Figuring it variables/limiters that are heavily time or distance dependant is something that needs to be accurately documented, and then practiced. First on a familiar track, then transfer that over to a track of differing dimensions and adjust accordingly. Your run up will be different at T-Town than it will be at Milton, and that will be way different than Cleveland or Detroit. Your run-up on a 333 may be perfect, but on a 200 it might be too long just because of the track dimensions.

taras0000

This is another reason to track splits, especially 1/4 lap splits if you can get them. It shows how your body functions and gives you a better insight into where you need to do more work.

southernfox

You are a very special case because you basically do a standing lap start for your 200m.

sarals 

taras0000

Nope. Nope. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnndddddddddddddddd nope. You might want to wait a little longer and learn about what is out there in the track world before going around and making definitive diagnoses of how people function and go about things. Things aren't always as simple as they seem, nor are things as rare as they might seem to someone who may fall into the general major demographic of an activity. Just because the outcomes of someone's results are the reverse of yours doesn't mean that they are doing things vastly different than you.

Chris Hoy, Ryan Bailey, Jan Van Eijden, Arnoud Tournant, and Francois Pervis are just a few examples (off the top of my head) of guys who have attained higher "200/250m" split times in Kilos and Keirins than they have in qualifying. Hoy and Pervis started to tilt that towards the 200m when they were focusing more on Sprint and Keirin later in their careers vs. the Kilo specialization that they did earlier.

Baby Puke

I'm another who qualifies slower but has a good standing lap. For years I used the same gear for 200 and kilo, and only recently are my 200 gears starting to grow a bit bigger than my kilo gears. But at the moment that difference is only 1-2 teeth on the front. However, I have been using bigger gears all around as there is a tipping point that's useful to explore re peak speed vs sustainable cadence in a TT. Probably 500 is a bit different (not there just yet), but with kilo a bigger gear, while hurting your opener a little, can allow you a higher peak speed, longer acceleration, and a lower cadence which is easier to hang onto in the last lap. And after some strength training on bigger gears, my opener is as just as good as it used to be. I'm not talking huge gears here, basically going down a tooth on the back, e.g., 49x14->48x13. I know some dudes who are successfully running pretty big gears even for 500.

carleton

Well...not exactly.

The F200 that you witnessed me do was on a dare. I was running my mouth and said that I could do a "Standing Lap style Flying 200M as fast as I could do a traditional Flying 200M". If I were in at a bigger comp, my windup would be more traditional...and my gearing would be probably 4 to 5 gear-inches lower than if I did a standing 500M the same day.

Also, it was my first F200 in 5 years (including training). So, I'm sure it was a mess. I had been doing more standing starts all spring than F200m windups.

Regarding gearing:
The gearing for a 500M can and will often be bigger than that for a flying 200...depending on the riders energy profile (read: % of muscle fiber types).

+1

carleton

Everybody is different.

You have to experiment and take good notes to see what works for you. There are many factors. Too many to sum up with a sentence like, your gear for X event will always be bigger than your gear for Y event.

Step 1: Ride and record data.
Step 2: Interpret the data.
Step 3: Tweak something
Step 4: Repeat.

This is essentially what a coach does for an athlete (s)he is both Recorder and Interpreter.

With modern tech, we can have a computer record and then serve as our own interpreter.

carleton

+1

That's how I do it.

taras0000

Referencing your use of bigger gears for 500m, and finding that it works for you, how would you gear yourself for a 2 lap Chariot Race? With a good holeshot, you could essentially try and keep people behind and outside of you as you accelerate and continue to the finish line, or would you gear up and try to come around with a higher max speed? I know this is dependant on who you are facing in your heat, just wondering if this is something that would change compared to past strategies.

sarals