Originally Posted by
Godsight
If you have access to previous races average speed with the same field of racers, you can use that as a guideline with taking in consideration your cadence sweet spot to calculate the gear ratio you want.
ie
Senior elite at Bromont is usually around 43-45kph average speed during mass start races
My cadence sweet spot is 95-105rpm
So i hover between 50/14 and 50/13
Well that was fun. Nothing like getting dragged around by 2-3 masters in my age group who were also racing in the Elite category the same night. Your calculations seem close. We were averaging about 43-45kph. My average cadence was 99 rpm (max 134 rpm), and I was using 48:14. It felt good, until they were overtaking me the last 10m! :-). What an amazing learning experience though. Can't wait to get out there again.