Your gearing
 

I want to know what is your favorite gearing for your track races

ex)
Category: Cat 3
Event: Match Sprint
Chainring: 48t
cog: 15t
and some pictures of you racing, your bike, or other will be great:thumb:

There is no favourite gear. Only the right one for the situation. You may find yourself using different gears during a match sprint tournament depending on your opponent and strategy. Hell, you'll probably change gearing in between heats to employ a different strategy against the same opponent. Gearing is just a tool.

I like 51x15. But that's because it's a palindrome.

For me (enduro) gearing comes down to two questions:
1. How fast will the race be? The faster the race, the bigger the gear.
2. How steady will the race be? (ie, how often will I be making accelerations/jumps?) The steadier the race (or my own expected performance), the bigger the gear.

I use 51x15 (92") as a baseline for local, mid-range points races. For jumpier races (local madisons, points races with very small fields, or especially tired legs) I'll go down to a 90". For steadier races (ie 15km scratch races) I'll use a larger gear - 93" for local events, 95" for national-level events - on the assumption that it'll be fast and require me to keep my speed up and stay sheltered, not jumping or attacking - just following wheels.

The biggest gears I'll use are for local races - short scratch races, tempos, point-a-laps (basically anything under 4km), and for keirins the highest i'll bother going is 96.5" (50x14), though I think I've put a 51 on there before. Doesn't help - me riding a good keirin is about staying in the pocket and anticipating a strong jump, and just rolling it in fully sheltered (Or getting tactically lucky - I won a keirin from the front, once, but it was just a heat which meant that everybody behind me was trying to beat each other, not me).

Thank you for all your explanation.
Today I learn that my gear rario was really low compare to other people

It is good for new racers (who are racing slower racers) to start out with lower gears.

In my first race, I used 52x15t and I suffered a lot.
Also it was my first time on a velodrome.(one year ago)
but now I am working on a lower gear.
I hope I could know the average speed for my race.
So my plan for next race is to record the whole race with my computer.

A few days ago I watched a top cyclist being motor paced at well over 35 mph while riding an 86" gear for several 250m laps (next time I'll try to get lap times for an accurate speed).

Sprinter gears these days are pretty large. A lot of people rarely drop below 100" when doing their 200's, some ride really high for these. Rounds are usually a bit smaller, and will depend on tactics, (going long? =bigger; plan to hold the guy up and jump closer to the line? =smaller) and where you are in the tourney (smaller at first, getting larger as you go up against people your speed). Keirin gears are usually close to what you use for a 200 (motor gets you up to speed), and kilo depends on your philosophy and physiology.

I've been creeping up over the years. Used to 200 in 94 at the biggest, rounds in 90, 92, kilo in 92, 94 or 96 depending upon track and weather conditions. These days I've been experimenting over 100 for 200, but still hovering around 95-100 for 200, 94ish for rounds. Kilo has lately been 97. All this does not mean I'm going faster (sadly).

This is a very personal topic, and perhaps more than any other, your mileage may vary. Also depends a lot of the level of your competition. If you're just getting started, sprinting in 86 or 88 may make total sense.

My neighbor is a retire track cyclist(Master) and he always recommend me go with lower gear ratio.
When he saw me riding 52x15 he told me to lower the gear ratio.

I saw New Zealand team doing motor pacing last year, and I really wanted to talk to them, but they seem busy and I was too shy haha
and it will be pretty cool to see their accurate speed

the cool thing about track racing is that you can always get speed from video - either from lap time, 200m time, half-lap time - there are lines all over the track you can use!

A handful of the fastest masters sprinters (40-50yr)in the world are riding 10" 200's on gears around 55x12
Plenty of the elites riding 9" 200's are on the same big gears.

The old "Spin to Win" is pretty much dead!
At the end of the day it's about what you are fastest on.. You'll have to figure that out for yourself..

Oh wow
If my neighbor see how people are using 55x12 in the match sprint, it will blow his mind. haha
I should show him this post tomorrow.

Big gears are a major trend of the last decade or so. If you look at vids from the 80's or earlier it's clear even the top pro's rarely went much bigger than 90". These days, for olympic level riders 105" might be considered small. That is a huge difference.

What that means to you is debatable. It's still definitely possible to go fast on an 88" in amateur races. But as Quinn said, the trend is definitely towards bigger. And people and various levels of the sport are going faster now than in the past. How big a role the big gears plays in that is open to interpretation, but the consensus from people who are tuned into the sport and open minded about it generally agree that bigger is better, again depending upon context.

yep!

and i still ride smaller gears than babypuke

Haha, I'm still not decided!

I ran a 97" for kilos last year and 100" for F200. For heats I dropped down to a 94". I'll probably bump up a few inches this year across the board. For funsies the other night I ran a 106" for keirin. That was less fun in practice than it was in my head when I put it on.

I thought you need a special lockring for 12t cogs and most of company doesn't make 12t.
so is 12t cogs are custom made?

My 12 came with a special lockring, but it wasn't custom (gigas).

Crap, now I have to buy a new chain ring...

What's a Lockring?

It's a thing Cat 1s don't use because they only pedal forwards very quickly.

There are several companies making 12t cog and lockrings. Eurasia has them. Be aware that if you ride Miche hubs, it is going to get expensive because the available 12t lockrings are for standard (lefthand) threading and the Miche threading is different (and fortunately, slightly bigger diameter). A machinist can re-tap to the Miche standard, but if he is smart, it will be expensive! Those lockrings are very hard. He may have to stop and resharpen his tooling several times to tap, what, a 1/4"?

I've been this route, not for the velodrome but because I had a custom fix gear road bike made to ride serious hills. Since I have to go up, it is a given I ride a 42t chainring. A 12t gives me 95" for the descent. Not huge coming off Crater Lake or down the famous descent into Ashland, OR. That lockring, $/gram is like expensive jewelry.

Edit: The 12t lockrings are bell shaped, looking from the rear. Narrow at the cog and extending out about an 1/8" before flaring out to the normal lockring diameter so a standard tool can be used. Hint: The Park lockring wrenches suck here because they are narrow and tend to slip off to the inside if you don't pay attention. The Pedros Trixie fix gear wrenches for the hip crowd work far better. They are thick enough that you can hold the wrench against the cog just like you normally would. I carry the Trixie under my toolbag, but it gets used every time at home when it's the 12t lockring.

Ben

A lockring is a lightweight and inexpensive braking alternative to using dual chainwheels, dual chains, and dual cogs on a flip-flop hub - of course. ;)

A typo.