Yes, as pmooney notes, the range of sprockets on your rear hub is a crucial factor in your quest to become a more efficient road rider. With a 52/42 combination up front, you should strongly consider having a shop install a new freewheel or cassette (depending on what your bike requires) with a large sprocket of at least 28 teeth---larger if your rear derailleur can handle it.
Starting at the beginning of this road season, I, too, have been striving to keep my heart rate in the plus-or-minus 130 bpm range for at least 75 percent of my rides. The wider the gear range available, the easier maintaining that heart rate level becomes. After several months of those Zone 2-dominated rides, I find that I'm doing considerably higher speeds in that zone, as well as in higher zones.
Old man digressions:
Originally Posted by
79pmooney
What freewheel/cassette are you riding? We all raced and trained on 52 (53) - 42 back in the day and used small closely spaced freewheels. (Rarely more than 24 teeth.)
---Not all of us! Starting in 1964, I spent years training and racing on a track bike, with a 51/19 chainring/sprocket combination (approximately 72 gear inches) while everyone else in my local bike club rode their road bikes. Back then, the Amateur Bicycle League of America (ABLA) specified that both freewheel and fixed-gear bikes were OK for road racing, as long as the bike had at least one working brake. Fixed-gear bikes were not excluded from road races until sometime in the 1970s.
Originally Posted by
79pmooney
The bikes and gearing of the old days don't work with the modern constant RPM and HR thinking. The 52-42s and narrow FWs much more so than the earlier fix gears but still basically incompatible. Getting over the routine hills on the famous "Allis Loop" of Boston with a constant HR on the bikes John Allis rode? If you'd suggested that to him, he'd have laughed in your face.
John Allis! I remember the guys from Boston --- Allis, Leighton Chen, Tom Officer, etc. ---showing up at West Rock in New Haven for the New England Road Racing Championship in 1965 and dominating the event. Awe-inspiring. Then as now, the best riders tended to do the most mileage in training. (Mark Cavendish, the British rider who is arguably among the most successful road and track sprinters in the history of the sport, once said that, when he asked his first national-team-level coach for a training program, the coach said, "
Just ride 16 hours a week. For the first few months, that's all you need to do.")
The only difference is that people can now ride according to heart rate and power and meticulously track their improvement throughout the season.
Originally Posted by
79pmooney
Now, I spent nearly all of my time outside of races, downhills and speedwork on the small chainring. Hundreds of hours every summer on the 42-14,15 and 17. Hill? The 19 and stand. Rainy day? The fix gear with its 17 or late summer, 16.
I still do the majority of my miles, including throughout notoriously hilly northern Baltimore County, on a modern fixed-gear bike, with a 48/18 setup (about 71 inches). I keep telling myself that at almost 71 years of age, I should be worrying about preserving my knees, but I just love my track bike too much.