Disregarding my Schwinn Typhoon, I started keeping score with my 1976 Peugeot PX 10 LE. It came with a Stronglight 52 x 45 and a 14 x 21 five speed freewheel. I always thought this Peugeot was set up for the pavé of northern France with those gears and wire-wrapped and soldered 3x tubular wheels. Yet according to Peugeot’s advertising, this is what the boys rode in the Tour de France. Chapeau! Since this was my first real bike, the coolness of this Rule #5 rig was lost on me. The uncoolness of Mafac brakes and Simplex derailleurs was not lost on me and over time I swapped out many of the French components for Campagnolo ones but the Stronglight crankset was worthy and it stayed the longest. I found a drilled-out 42 inner ring. Surely Bernard Thévenet would approve of that. It was not such a taskmaster as the 45 and scored very high on the cool scale.
Eventually the 52s went to 53s and the 42s to 39s and there they stayed.
Post-Peugeot I lived on the sandy moraine called Cape Cod. It is rolling, easy-to-ride country; there were no steep, long climbs and the default 39 inner ring was too small for the Cape. Some switched back to 42s but our LBS had a handful of Campagnolo 44 tooth inner rings and a few of us installed them. It didn’t occur to me at the time but I was reverting to a more modern version of my original Peugeot gears. This was not a chainring for the early season but once summer arrived, it made perfect sense. The shifts between the front two chainrings were subtle and smooth. It was all good until we ventured over to a proper climb on the nearby island of Martha’s Vineyard. That climb, known to us as the hill-o-death, started off steep and never eased (this was pre-Garmin world, an estimated 15% grade). It actually was the kind of climb where if you were going to have a heart attack, it would be here. The 44 worked, it just meant most of it was done out of the saddle and the pain cave entrance was lower down. But, it may have been a faster way to get the job done. There was no in-the-saddle spinning going on; it was just more heaving of bike and body trying to turn over the shortest gear the 44 would give up.
I came to Maui armed with the 53 x 39. Earlier on Kauai, I once felt shame and horror as an older dude with stick legs passed me on the Waimea Canyon climb. Those sorry sticks were whizzing over a vile compact crankset. It gave me pause. But on Maui the 53 x 39 got the job done, until I did Maui’s version of the hill-o-death, The Wall. I got up it, but it wasn’t pretty or easy. Something was going to break doing that: knees, heart, chain, pedal, more likely part of me, rather than the bike. I was on Maui for the long haul and the Wall was not going anywhere so I opted for a compact crank.
My above prologue leads me to this, my theory of relativity. The terrain dictates the chainrings. You want a 52 x45 on your bike, stay away from the Pyrenees. If you have a compact crankset on there, there had better be some big ass climbs out your front door. But here at Velominati we like to quantify our suffering. My math is as weak as my VAM but I’m working on a calculation with correction factors which would determine what kind of crank one should have on their bike.
((GL2 x %Gr) 1/age) Bf x BPf x Df
Where:
GL = length of toughest grade encountered on Sunday ride.
Gr = Steepest sustained section of GL.
Bf = Belgian Factor, also known as Museeuw. The need to always ride in the large ring, always.
BPf = Big Pussy Factor, inverse of Bf. The inclination when a climb begins to sit when one might stand, to shift down rather than up.
Df = The Dutch factor, this is a terrain correction for sea level riding, as the Dutch do along the North Sea.
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@ErikdR
Ha, Just came back from Copenhagen a few days ago. My grandparents immigrated from Denmark in the early 20th century and I still have family there(cousins a remove or two), but they had come years ago for visits in the States, and now take visits from me. Had a great time at Christiania's 40th birthday party on Thursday last. =) I am hoping to haul my bike up there next spring/summer and do some riding. As bad as the Flemish winds get...I am guessing they are even worse in the northern reaches =)
@HMBSteve Very Nice shot. Looks like a great climb.
@johnthughes
Shit yeah; the winds - especially north-westerners, in spring and autumn, and south-westerners in summer - do get pretty rough sometimes. Many years ago, together with my cousin. I rode from the Netherlands to Denmark, which was great - and then back again, which was torture. Through south-Jutland, that part of northern Germany that is known as 'Ost-Friesland', and the north of Holland, we faced a howling southwesterly wind every single day for 6 days in a row - I'll never forget that as long as I live.
Feel free to get in touch when you are in these parts*. Seriously: I'll be happy to point you in the direction of some beautiful rides. Denmark is a great country for cycling (particularly Jutland, i.e. the mainland, and the islands of Funen and Langeland).
* @Frank & @Gianni have my mail address, I think.
Rapidly approaching midnight here (as well as in Belgium, I suppose). Over & Out for now.
@Teocalli
Nope, happens a lot. Today's was a little different though in as we came over a crest & started a pretty steep descent back in to a gorge this epic vista opened up with fog, sunrise & all sorts, problem was the descent was that steep that I was already going fast enough that pulling the bike up wasn't an option. View atop the previous climb wasn't terrible though.
@unversio
The question that remains is: are you built like a rabbit or a horse? And I'm talking about legs, FYI. Crank length has nothing to do with height, but inseam.
I'm 6'4" and only an inch taller than you, but I am willing to bet if I rode your Merckx, I'd raise the saddle by a half meter.
Crank length has to do with the circle your legs can draw, not the gear you can pull. The analog of this is telling someone which tire width they run and a what pressure, without relaying the weight of the rider and the severity of the tarmac.
I hope I have the time in the next day or two to read through all the RAD thats been posted here. That said I am investing in 41, 42, 44, and 46 tooth inner chainrings. And a 44T outer ring for CX.
I realize that going small is in vogue and that the world is overpopulated by pussies and people who pay attention to "facts" and "science". That said, that science is clouded by doping and all other manner of skewed data.
The only thing I really know is that when I was following Johan Museeuw's wheel in 2012, I couldn't keep up with him when going uphill. I noticed he was in the big ring (and so were some Keeper's Tour companions) and so I changed into that same ring. Suddenly I stopped reaching for gears and was comfortable and holding wheels.
Big ring is mo'betta so long as you can turn the gear. I am chainging to a 42 for Seattle riding, and a 46 for the Cobbles. As for CX, 44 is the Score. It rhymes, which means logic and science hold no sway here.
Im with Gianni on this one, 50 X 34 all the way, covers all situations from the flatest of flats to a couple of our 18% ramps.
I'll run a 50x34 when SRAM release their 10t cog for road then you could have a sweet 10-23 to run with it. I would recommend trying bigger tyres for those on compact groups, a 25mm tyre gives you another 109 mm in roll distance.
@piwakawaka
Correct, already doing it ! 23 up front 25 out back