badbikemechanic

I need to convert my mountain bike over to single for sscxwc philly! I am wondering what gearing racers are finding success with right now?

DinoShepherd

Twenty niner?

The two biggest factors are what the course looks like and how strong of really are?

Without that this will quickly become a circle jerk.

I generally gear around 67 inches, bit I am not a race winning contender.

Cynikal 

I use 38x17 for a standard cross bike. Don't take worlds too seriously. Just drink your way through it.

Andy_K 

I use 39x18 (~59 inches) on my SSCX bike. A girl on my team told me that's way too low for CX, but I don't think she factored in how slow I am. I generally finish in the bottom 10%, so to that extent she's right, but I'm not sure I could make it through 45 minutes of start and stop racing with a much bigger gear. I'm weak and I like to spin.

What you want is a gear where the number of places where you're mashing too hard to go on and the number of places where you're spinning out are about the same. Obviously this depends on your power and skills as well as the course terrain. What works for me isn't likely to work for you, and even for me there are courses where it doesn't work and I'd change the gearing if I was really serious.

Of course, if you're serious you've already set yourself up for failure at SSCXWC unless they're doing it wrong on your coast.

caloso

41x18 worked pretty well for me on a dry, grassy, mostly flat course. I will probably go down if there's going to be mud or more climbing.

DinoShepherd

Ha! Finally figured out who you are. Saw you at WaCounty. :-)

60 inches was actually about right for some of the muddy blind date races.

Andy_K 

Yeah, Blind Date was where I first put my SSCX bike on the dirt (in the Master C race) and I was happy with the gearing there -- spun it out once or twice on the pavement after the finish line and barely made it up the hill behind the velodrome. I finished in about the same place the weeks I used my singlespeed bike as I did the weeks I used my geared bike but I felt faster.

Truth be told, there are very few places where I'd be spinning out with 60 inches. I would have been able to do it at Barton, but I didn't use the SS there. Generally, I just look at the course and if there's anything that looks remotely like a hill my SS bike stays in the van. Barton is the only race so far where I thought my gearing would have been too low to be useful.

I haven't figured out who you are, BTW. Say hello next time you see me.

scrub

I race 39x18 in the Seattle area, 39x19 for Silver lake (lots of sand and up/down). I've been finishing top 20 in the Cat 4 35+ against geared riders so I think it is working for me.

chriskmurray

60 gear inches works well for me on dry courses but with a lot of tight corners, I also fall into the slow category though.

91MF

someone once told me for a fast and dry course 63gi is the standard. adjust accordingly to conditions/fitness.

I have never 'really' raced but I do a local ~70km mixed terrain point to point called paris2ancaster. the past three years I have used 42/16(~71gi) and had to run all of the real sloppy stuff. figure I made it up on the rail trail and small road sections with the ability to go faster. that's what I tell myself anyways.