spelger

no way. think of the traffic.

tomato coupe

That's pretty much the whole enchilada -- if you choose to shut it down when you could keep going, you're not going to do well in competition. Shutting it down now so that you might not have to shut it down later isn't a good strategy.

GhostRider62

It would take the cadence from 30 rpm to around 37 rpm with gearing to 28 inches from 34 inches. And, the point you missed is about 370 watts instead of 300 watts at 30 rpm.

Which is harder? Is either sustainable? For how long? No, it is not even close to a game changer. You will suffer regardless.

When fit, amateur cyclists take on hills approaching 20%, there is no gearing that lets you spin (unless you are on a tadpole with Schlumpt mountain gear and 406 wheels)

aliasfox

I presume you're referring to my post about parking garages - sure, retail parking decks will be full on weekends, and corporate parking decks will be busy on weekdays (some of them, at least) - but there might be one nearby that's both easy to access and quiet enough to ride on. Just a thought, really.

PeteHski

Or it allows you to ride slower with less power at the same cadence.

I just did a simulated climb of Bealach na Ba on my Kickr Bike with a 35/33 lowest gear (https://cyclinguphill.com/100-climbs/bealach-na-ba/). Steepest gradient is 20% and the steep ramps are relatively long. My lowest cadence on the steepest part was 37 rpm at 300W and I was right on my limit by that point in the climb. I'm pretty sure I would have stalled just one gear higher (very close to HR max and 37 rpm is about as slow as I could pedal with that torque). My average cadence for the whole climb was 66 and I was in my lowest gear for everything over 8%. I used slightly higher gears for the shallow sections, but never higher than 5th gear (35/19) and mostly in the 33 or 28 rear.

I'm pretty sure I could climb this hill faster with a 35/36 or even a 33/36 gear. I might try this at the weekend as I can program any gearing into the Kickr Bike.

SoSmellyAir

I have not tried a chest strap yet. I am not sure the potential discomfort would be worth the supposedly superior accuracy.

If I understand correctly a dedicated HRM has a higher sampling rate than an Apple Watch. When it comes to cycling I mostly wear it to tell time (large font) and for its fall detection function. The blood oxygen function is neat but I am not sure how accurate it would be during exercise. The problem is that the Strava app on the Apple Watch functions totally separately from the Strava app on the iPhone; I wish the Apple Watch can function as an additional sensor to the Strava app on the iPhone.

Yeah, I suppose this falls squarely within the no news is good news category.

rsbob 

^ You don’t even know you are wearing a chest strap after you get going unless you have it WAY too tight. it’s not a bra, just a thin strap, but then a few here might prefer a combination bra/strap.

VegasJen

I see what you did there!
1-2 minutes is a pipe dream, at least for me. The section of the course we're talking about is uphill for at least three, maybe four miles. It just doesn't get to that nasty grade until about 1-2 miles from the top. And this is already 26 miles into a 34 mile ride, after a 1 mile swim and before a 10 mile run. I wasn't out of gas yet. Getting off the bike was a decision made to conserve energy for later in the event.
No parking garages where I live.

VegasJen

OK, so I thought a visual representation would be good at this point. This picture is with the Alex wheel that originally came on this bike. This is NOT the wheel I had on last Saturday. This cassette has a 27 tooth top gear. Looking at it now, I wonder if my chain is too short for this gear? If I put a longer chain on, do you think I could fit a 30 tooth with this derailleur?


This picture was taken in my garage, and yes, I know I need to sweep.

SoSmellyAir

One has to live somewhere almost perfectly flat if a parking garage represents the best option for hill intervals.

spelger

chain seems fine to me. a bigger cog might be a stretch though.

aliasfox

Having lived somewhere where road riding was ill advised (few shoulders, short sight lines, and lots of large trucks), and the only decent option was a rail trail with maximum 1.5% grades, I’d have been happy to have a parking deck nearby for a few workouts. As it was, there weren’t any, but at least one neighborhood had a 1/2 mile 6% hill as part of a little loop that I could practice on.

spclark 

Show us a pic with the wheel you were riding last Saturday please.

The one you posted with a different wheel shows chain on largest cog up front, which I doubt would be your practice when mashing uphill. When on the smallest cog it moves the derailleur cage well back from where that pic shows it to be I think a 28 or 30t wheel at the back would work fine.

fishboat

Yet another in a series of threads by this OP about portions of a ride she's having a hard time accomplishing. There are no quick mechanical (an extra 2-3 teeth on a rear cog helps, but isn't the problem) fixes or secrets to make things better..she needs to get in better shape/condition...pretty simple.

Is the cross-chained config in the pic above something you ride often?

OP..post a pic of you riding your bike..and take advice(about fit, gearing, etc) from there.

spclark 

Other than buying an e-bike maybe? [/sarc]

S'truth re: conditioning vs. mechanical aids.

Still, different gearing may facilitate a shorter path to better conditioning. It'll still take time to reach a particular goal, but once that's achieved, returning to the original gearing may well be gratifying.

PeteHski

You are right, but her current gearing is just making things worse.

big john

Don't use the big ring/big cog combination (crosschaining). You can put a 32 on the back with that derailleur.

genejockey 

I don't think the OP was posting the bike in Biggie Bigs as a gear she might use, but rather because Biggie Bigs is one way of determining whether your chain is long enough. And it is.

spclark 

I'm taking this thread as inspiration for my own practice. Being rather new to cycling (after taking twelve+ years off) as well as entirely new to riding in an area offering some awesome hills to climb, I'm learning to overcome prior practices that may not be helpful for one at my age (74-1/2).

There's a hill I found last w/e that's a rural, paved road between a ridge and a coulee bottom. It's 0.7 miles in length with an elevation change of 250 feet end-to-end.

Last w/e I just coasted down as I'd already done about 8 miles to get to the start. Once down I had another two miles to get back to my car, so I was taking it easy. Brakes on going downhill all the way while watching for sand, gravel, branches, critters lurking around the bends....

Earlier this morning I went back, did it uphill for the first time. Only trepidation was the 1' wide streak of diesel someone had left from the bottom to about the 3/4 point exactly where I would have preferred to put both wheels.

This was a 'baseline' ride so I wasn't mashing, just doing a first attempt to use to measure future progress. Took me 9 minutes to do the .7 miles, stopped for a minute half-way up. Felt pretty good overall, no time today to do a second pass. Strava tells me 142 W avg. power, 4.7 mph, heart rate 134 avg., max. 153. This was using the 40/24 lowest gear my MB came with. If I can source a decent French-pattern freewheel w/ 14-28 cogs this hill will be my first ride to see what the gearing changes about the experience.

Going back downhill it took just 3 minutes w/ 0 watts expended and again, brakes on pretty much all the way down.

Iride01 

3x bike for the ride in question? What gear were you in when you bailed out and got off? If you were still in the big ring, then you need to learn to shift to a lower gear ratio and keep your cadence up. Pushing hard gears will wear you out quick.

genejockey 

OP indicated she was in 30 x 23.

GhostRider62

We have the same low gear, SRAM 35x33. You have a better power to weight ratio, I am claiming my senior citizen excuse. 300W is typically more than threshold for most riders. From the first turnpoint on one's lactate curve (LT1) to the second turnpoint (LT2 or approx. FTP), one starts to slowly consume a reserve of power typically referred to as W' or AWC. W' is the amount of KiloJoules one can expend over a certain, arguable critical limit. If one has 15kJ of reserves or so-called W' and they use this battery-like reserve for 150 seconds, they can apply an additional 100 watts (15,000 divided by 100). (I know you know this, just putting the nitty gritty for completeness)

My only real point is OP needs to survey a course's profile before travelling to a Triathlon and plan. Gears don't get you up walls, grit does. When there is a wall like she encountered, it is best to pace conservatively leading into it in order to maximize the capacity of that battery or W' because short steep walls like that are always hard. And, her decision to walk may have been the correct one given she had to do a marathon or half after the bike.

PeteHski

I agree. I was just adding the point that your lowest gear effectively determines your lowest power output for a given gradient at your minimum cadence. 300W @ 37 rpm was the lowest power I could ride at with a 35/33 on that 20% slope. Even second gear 35/28 would have pushed me over the edge on that long ramp i.e. 350W @ 37 rpm. Granted that's a fairly extreme situation as this was a beast of a 9 km climb with several long 20% ramps in the top half when I was already close to my limit. But still I'd rather be in a position to ride vs walk and lower gearing sometimes makes this possible.

I expect the OP was just grinding too much for comfort and chose to walk at a lower speed with less effort. Riding a lower speed is usually easier than walking if your gearing allows. She said she wasn't gassed out, so I think a lower gear might have kept her on the bike and moving a little faster than she could walk.

VegasJen

I work 12s the next three days. Will post a pic later in the week.
Only pic I have is more or less head on, so not sure how helpful that would be.
Actually, I do ride like that quite a bit. Really didn't know it was a problem. No real plan to it, I just find shifting on the rear to be simpler and more convenient when those gears will do than shifting both. It's not that I'm afraid to use the front. It's just that there's often so much overlap that I can get away with most things on the big gear where I live.
I remembered this grade from last year but didn't recall the exact course. I knew it was coming but I am not so familiar with the route that I knew where I was in relation to it at any given point. I may not be quite there yet, but I'm getting close to cashing in that senior citizen chip too. What's the age minimum on that thing?

cyclezen

Jen, hope you take this as a constructive comment...
IF, you're committed to this Tri thing, and cycling; then really becoming knowledgeable about the very basic and super important part 'gearing' is to cycling your best is KEY!
Riding by 'feeling' is an important part of cycling. certainly. But knowing yourself and how that relates to the entire range of gearing of your bike which available to you, is absolutely
essential for effective cycling, any cycling not just competition.
You need to know and understand your gearing range and how that works for you on each section of riding you do.
It's not something which can be TOLD to you by others. Each rider has their own degree of understanding which gearing (gear combo of the Front 'CHAIN RING and Rear 'COG') they use for a segment type. YOU need to develop that same knowledge.
It costs nothing, money-wise. It is completely FREE for you, because it is SCHOOLING and LEARNING of how to learn to use the gearing available and and why.
1st step is to make a gear chart for the combos of Chainring and rear cogs you have - your 3x front rings and 9 or 10 cogs on the back.
You can do this, or you can give the Forum your Chainring sizes and the Cassette/cog range on the rear - I'm sure someone here will give you a link to that chart - then you can also learn how to MAKE YOUR OWN CHART.
With that you'll start to develop an understanding what each gear combo means, relative to your riding capabilities, based on the gearing, in either 'GEAR INCHES' or 'DEVELOPMENT' (same thing/idea, different ways/numbers to express the 'gear' of any combo, I'm completely schooled in the traditional 'gear inches' and relate to that).
These 'gears' on your bike, becauses they are combos of front and rear, will have 'overlap'/sameness at points, so 3 front rings & 10 rear rings produces 30 gear combos, but likely there are only 27 or 26 or 25 gears which might be unique.
Once you know this, then you need to figure out how to use all these combos most efficiently, thru shifting progression... that takes time and awareness and shifting skills...
THEN
You can become estute on how to use them well and allow you to ride your best/fastest.most efficient. All this is up to you and your desire to learn and improve.
It's NOT an age thing... it's a 'desire', motivation, learning thing
Good Luck
Ride On
Yuri