Originally Posted by
Carbonfiberboy
Wrong. It would have been worse. Longer cranks would have helped. If you want to use shorter cranks to spin faster, you have to gear a lot lower, low enough that spinning the longer cranks at that rpm would feel like you were thrashing your legs, say 90+ cadence. Dropping crank length 5mm won't even be noticeable at that cadence except that you'd be even slower and cadence would drop because you wouldn't have the muscle power to move the cranks any faster. Except really, you probably wouldn't notice particularly except that you legs would be even more tired.
This is not true. In the same gear the pedal speed (Not Cadence) must be faster with the longer cranks to keep the same cadence. By reducing the length of the cranks it does a few things, slows the pedal speed and opens the hip angle and reduces the knee flex over the pedal stroke. It's not going to give anyone more power or make them go faster but at the same pedal speed as the larger cranks the cadence would be higher thus increasing endurance over the 15 miles of climbing. Granted this is very marginal as we are talking about a 2.5mm difference in crank length which amounts to a 5mm overall circumference when looking at pedal speed.
Originally Posted by
Carbonfiberboy
Moving your saddle forward and thus limiting your ham and glute use is really counterproductive. The longer the climb, the more you want to spread the muscular effort around.
The reasoning for the saddle forward was two fold. To make up the slight difference in saddle height with the shorter cranks and to open the hip angle for the longer climbs. It was 1/2cm of difference and was actually pretty comfortable for climbing.
Originally Posted by
Carbonfiberboy
Regear your bike so that climbing that grade, you're spinning ~80 in your second lowest gear. A bailout gear would have been nice, huh? You can use an online gear and cadence calculator to see what that gearing would be..
Typically I try to spin at 75-80 rpm when I have steep climbs (+6%). In anything less than a 6% grade, I can typically sit at 85-90 without issue. My bike is typically setup 50/34 x 11/28 when I am in the hills which is most of the time. The struggle I had on this ride specifically is that it was 15 miles at 6-8% grade. I just don't have a regular ride that has a 2 hour climb at +6%. So my cadence slowly dropped over the length of the climb. .
Originally Posted by
Carbonfiberboy
Odd that your sartorius muscle would become sore. Do your knees stay right over your pedals when you push down and not wobble? Never had that happen - usually my whole quads are quite evenly sore, even to the touch sometimes.
Knees don't wobble. Just had a bike fit a month ago and the fitter started with KOPS (he was more of a "classic" fitter). He had me slide the seat forward during the fitting as this frame (As mentioned in the OP) is at the large ends of frame sizes for me. Sliding forward shortened my reach and opened up my hip angle a little bit and gave me a little more power comparative to where the seat was previously. I thought it interesting as well that I didn't get cramping in any other muscle groups besides the satorius. Toward the end of the final climb I had to massage them a little bit while riding to keep them from cramping up.