easier gears

radiation man
radiation man Posts: 446
edited September 2012 in Road beginners
why are these gears not easy enough, i have sram rear cassette 12-26 front chainset 50-39-30 and i still cant get up all the hills on sportives, im i just to old now

Comments

  • Grill
    Grill Posts: 5,610
    Keep working at it. You don't start out a good climber, you mould yourself into one.
    English Cycles V3 | Cervelo P5 | Cervelo T4 | Trek Domane Koppenberg
  • ShutUpLegs
    ShutUpLegs Posts: 3,522
    ^^
    Have you replied to any of the responses in your 'Training' thread
  • radiation man
    radiation man Posts: 446
    yes
  • tiredofwhiners
    tiredofwhiners Posts: 598
    Practice makes perfect - with a 30 front and 26 rear you should be able to go up Everest. Thats mountain bike gearing.
  • karlth
    karlth Posts: 156
    tiredofwhiners wrote:
    Practice makes perfect - with a 30 front and 26 rear you should be able to go up Everest. Thats mountain bike gearing.

    If only. My lowest is 30x25 and Winnats defeated me.
  • dugliss
    dugliss Posts: 235
    tiredofwhiners wrote:
    Practice makes perfect - with a 30 front and 26 rear you should be able to go up Everest. Thats mountain bike gearing.

    That`s a bigger gear than on my compact with a 34-30, mtb gearing is much lower surely
  • t4tomo
    t4tomo Posts: 2,643
    indeed MTB generally 44-34-24 triple and up to a 30 or 32 on the back.
    Bianchi Infinito CV
    Bianchi Via Nirone 7 Ultegra
    Brompton S Type
    Carrera Vengeance Ultimate Ltd
    Gary Fisher Aquila '98
    Front half of a Viking Saratoga Tandem
  • JamesB5446
    JamesB5446 Posts: 471
    Grill wrote:
    Keep working at it. You don't start out a good climber, you mould yourself into one.
    This. That gear is low enough for any road in the UK.

    Unless you're towing something?
  • dugliss
    dugliss Posts: 235
    JamesB5446 wrote:
    Grill wrote:
    Keep working at it. You don't start out a good climber, you mould yourself into one.
    This. That gear is low enough for any road in the UK.

    Unless you're towing something?



    It obviously isn`t as the op said he can`t get up every hill that he needs to, we`re not all Contador you know
  • tiredofwhiners
    tiredofwhiners Posts: 598
    dugliss wrote:
    tiredofwhiners wrote:
    Practice makes perfect - with a 30 front and 26 rear you should be able to go up Everest. Thats mountain bike gearing.

    That`s a bigger gear than on my compact with a 34-30, mtb gearing is much lower surely

    I was exaggerating to illustrate the point.

    If you've got 30 on the rear, then you must live in a very very hilly region. Or you don't go up hills other than once a year. :D
  • dugliss
    dugliss Posts: 235
    ..........or that`s what the bike came with
  • Lycra-Byka
    Lycra-Byka Posts: 292
    Top of the road beginners forum you just came from is a guide called "help I need smaller gears" start there very useful information.
  • JamesB5446
    JamesB5446 Posts: 471
    dugliss wrote:
    JamesB5446 wrote:
    Grill wrote:
    Keep working at it. You don't start out a good climber, you mould yourself into one.
    This. That gear is low enough for any road in the UK.

    Unless you're towing something?



    It obviously isn`t as the op said he can`t get up every hill that he needs to, we`re not all Contador you know
    Contador uses pretty low gears I believe. But then he is climbing much longer hills than we have in the uk.
  • keef66
    keef66 Posts: 13,123
    I thought I had all the gears I needed with a 30t chainring / 25t sprocket, but I still failed to scale the North Face of Rosedale Chimney!
  • karlth
    karlth Posts: 156
    dugliss wrote:
    JamesB5446 wrote:
    Grill wrote:
    Keep working at it. You don't start out a good climber, you mould yourself into one.
    This. That gear is low enough for any road in the UK.

    Unless you're towing something?



    It obviously isn`t as the op said he can`t get up every hill that he needs to, we`re not all Contador you know

    ^^^ This.

    Road gearing is saddled with certain legacies. Mountain bikes taught people a few things:

    1. you can spin up hills
    2. you can do it in the saddle
    3. you can have more than two chainrings.

    For all the compact chainsets and 9, then 10 and now 11 speed cassettes, a lot of road gearing is still, to my mind, geared (if you'll excuse the term) around an ideal roadie who's (a) athletic, (b) strong, (c) happy to stand up to climb and (d) willing to grind big gears in doing so. You'd have to be very good to spin up many of the hills in my area at 80-90rpm with road gearing in the way that we're advised to do.

    In the old days we lesser mortals used to get off and walk when it got too steep - I remember as a lad having to push up some hills in north Bedfordshire. MTBs taught us we didn't have to, but it's taking time for the necessary ratios to become acceptable to roadies, it seems. We're our own worst enemy - I feel like I've let myself down when I reluctantly press on the shifter to drop to the 30 chainwheel, even on a 20%.

    Given that I've not yet made it up Winnats on 30x25, I suggest there're plenty of roads I couldn't manage, or only with great pain, with the slightly lower 30x26 - Wrynose, Hardknott, Fleet Moss, Bealach na Ba, Porlock Hill - just off the top of my head, and plenty that would have me wishing it went lower. That hopeful push of the right shifter into the gear you know isn't there because you know you're already at the bottom of the cassette.
  • JamesB5446
    JamesB5446 Posts: 471
    I'll have to make time to have a pop at some of those climbs. I'm a bit of a noob and I've only really ridden in the Wolds and a few climbs on the C2C. I've managed so far on 39:25 bottom gear, but most of those climbs were pretty short. I was wishing I'd ordered a compact on a few of the steeper ones though.

Categories