6 months of cycling

[fluffybunnyuk]

As the topic attests to I havent been tour cycling long.Anyway my last longish trip was 75miles in 5hrs 42 mins with front+rear panniers fully loaded. Average speed 13.1 mph. I think it'll take another year or so for me to get cycling legs at this rate.

Anyway moving onto the point. When i start out Im turning a gear like 36/14, and by the end of the day im down to 28/whatever...

On my dawes galaxy the gear changes are quite large -- about 8 inches/gear. I like to use the top gears on the middle ring or the bottom gears on the granny ring. I prefer spinning over higher gears with 70-80 inches about comfortable, im normally about 50% higher rpm than commuters pushing a big gear. The gear jumps are really noticeable. ie im cycling at 13mph theres a bit too much resistance and i drop a gear and the speed changes to 11 mph for the same cadence then theirs too little resistance.

The question was can I change my cassette for closer top and bottom range ratios ie so its more like 11-12-14-15-17-20-24-28-32 or should I give it longer to get fitter?

Looking for advice

Emma

[Paulatic]

I think if you've ave 13.1 with front and rear panniers over 75mls then you are fit. Try another cassette you might well prefer it. Personally I prefer a closer ratio which can make a head wind or slope less of a speed drop.

[honesty]

I take a different approach when Im touring. Speed doesn't matter, cadence is where I am comfortable, gear is whichever one allows me to do this, distance is what matters - actual time on the saddle. Therefore large jumps in gearing don't matter to me, as as long as I keep my cadence comfortable I dont mind doing 4mph or 15mph.

If you did want to look at changing your cassette though, have a look at the options available from different manufacturers, the sram ones as shimano one as interchangeable. I'm really not sure if the gearing is different between them though. You can dismantle a cassette and build them back up using different cogs, but I'm not au fait with that!

[tim-b]

Hi

Maintaining a cadence is one of the reasons for gearing

A gear change allows you to change your cadence to where you're comfortable
http://www.bikeradar.com/gear/article/t ... ers-16394/

To address your question, 13mph fully laden seems pretty reasonable to me, if you find it difficult to maintain a comfortable cadence then I would consider changing the cassette. Bear in mind that this could be an issue when you undertake hillier tours.

Regards
tim-b

[niggle]

So what are your chainrings and cassette currently? With some middle and big chainring combinations you can get a 'half step' effect, i.e. reducing the gaps between ratios to about half, if you swap back and forth between the chainrings.

This was the plan I had when I ordered a 22-32-42 chainset from Spa Cycles to combine with 8 speed 11-32 cassette on my touring bike (but unfortunately they sent a 22-32-44, even though the order confirmation email and invoice that came in the box both said 22-32-42, and I did not notice their error for months, though I wondered why it did not seem to work as anticipated )

For example with the 22-32-42 chainrings I had ordered, if I was using the 6th sprocket with the middle chainring it would give 32x15 = 58", then by changing to the big chainring and 5th sprocket it would be 42x18 = 63", then changing to 7th sprocket and returning to the middle ring would give me 32x13 = 67"

As it is with the 44T big ring 44x18 = 66" which is too close to the 32x13 = 67" to be of any real use.

EDIT: 13mph average over 75 miles with a loaded bike does sound absolutely fine to me, especially considering one leg of my cycle camping tour last August was about 8mph average over about 35 miles, but then that was Exmoor in hot sunny weather with several short but severe climbs and one extreme one I had to walk up stopping every 100m or so.

[fluffybunnyuk]

To clarify on some parts. I have 2 parts to my touring ...1 is getting there, and 2 is real touring.
Part 2 is fine since im more interested in the scenery. Part 1 is the sticking point, I have a tendency to want to get where im going in a hurry, and cant afford train fares, so I pedal this bit as fast as possible...

My gearing is standard galaxy 48/36/26 with 11-32 cassette

| 11 12 14 16 18 21 24 28 32
----+------------------------------------------------------
48 | 118.5 108.7 +93.1+ +81.5+ 72.4 62.1 54.3 46.6 40.7
36 | 88.9 *81.5* 69.9 61.1 54.3 46.6 ?40.7? ?34.9? 30.6
26 | 64.2 58.9 50.4 44.1 39.2 33.6 **29.4** **25.2** **22.1**

1 asterisk is normally the gear i use. 2 asterisk is hill gears. The plus signs are about where i think id like to be pedalling when im a bit fitter. The question mark is what im using after a long tough day on the last 5-10 miles.

The point was I dont really use the middle of the cassette 16-21T so I was wondering if I could do a custom cassette and make the top and bottom end of the cassette a bit closer with a bigger midrange? I dont really need anything over 90 inches.

44/34/24 maybe better for me?

[CJ]

I think the jumps between the gears feel too big because you are trying too hard to go as fast as possible all of the time. That is why you start off using middle ring mostly and by the end of the day are mostly on the inner. Touring is not about how far you have gone in a day, but how much you have experienced and enjoyed! If you need to go further, spend longer awheel. A moving average (not counting stops) of 13 mph with front and rear panniers is pretty fast for genuine touring (rather than watered-down stage-race that competitive cyclists think of as touring!). I used to be able to tour that fast when I was in my 20s. Now in my 50s, I'm happy to have averaged 10mph after a full day hauling your kind of load, 11 or 12mph with my kind . If you averaged 13.1 mph in real time, including stops, that's incredible - and/or you didn't stop enough!

So: If you shift down one sprocket with that cassette and speed typically drops from 13 to 11 mph, that indicates you were overdoing it by trying to keep at 13 and have also reduced your cadence and effort after shifting. Because the average jumps on that cassette are 14%, which is appreciably less than the 18% difference between 13 and 11 mph.

I'd say that cassette is perfectly fine and you need to stop listening to the pseudo-racers on forums who use touring as endurance training and revise your ideas of how far it is normal to go each day on a bike with fully loaded front and rear panniers. Or be prepared to spend far more of hours in each day, actually moving. Unless you want to be a racer of course.

I see Emma's partly answered some of my observations with her latest post. Okay, I see, it's the 'getting there' bit. That puts me in mind of one of my favourite lines in a song by Harry Chapin - about a long commute to visit his girlfriend by Greyhound bus, where it eventually dawns on him that: "it's got to be the going, not the getting there that's good" - in life's journey too.

[niggle]

Actually my current chainset, i.e. 22-32-44T, might work better for you with your 9 spd 11-32 cassette, as you would have ratios available of 62", 66", 73", 75", 79", 85", 100", 109" (and you will get some even lower hill climbing gears at the bottom end as well).

With the 24-34-44 you suggest you would get 58", two versions of 66", 75", 85", 100", 109", not really an improvement

Also your front mech may not like the 10T gap between 34 and 44T, and work OK with the 12T gap for 32-44T, as it is doing with the current set up.

OTOH it might not like 44T at all, especially if it is a road front mech (and if you have STI shifters you are not going to be able to change to an MTB front mech very easily).

Also CJ beat me to it but I was wondering if you are trying to go fast by pushing a big gear, when it may be more effective to push a comfortable gear a bit faster and not knacker yourself so quickly.

[andrewjoseph]

i don't quite understand Emma's posts, front and rear panniers full riding 75 miles 'to get there'. is this to a b&b? if it is then you are carrying a lot for what could be light touring.

if camping, where is the tent?

then comes the 'touring'.

is this once you get to your base? you then spend time riding around the area unladen?

my wife and i cycle camp: on my bike, two large rear panniers, tent on rear rack, small front panniers and bar bag.

my wife has: two medium rear panniers, sleepings pads on rear rack, bar bag.

this carries all our clothes, cooking equipment, tent and sleeping stuff.

we tend to ride 50-70 km over 6-8 hours.

for our b&b end to end we had, two medium rear panniers, bar bag and a dry bag on my rack. my wife had just a bar bag.
we rode avg 100km a day, with one day at 130km.

so if you are b&b'ing, you may be carrying too much.

[niggle]

i don't quite understand Emma's posts, front and rear panniers full riding 75 miles 'to get there'. is this to a b&b? if it is then you are carrying a lot for what could be light touring.

then comes the 'touring'.

is this once you get to your base? you then spend time riding around the area unladen?

Emma stated she cannot afford train tickets and it is a case of getting from home to an area she wants to tour/explore. She may also be time poor like I am, so wants to make the best use of holiday time and not waste it plodding along through areas that she is familiar with and/or are not interesting at the expense of time to explore new and more interesting or attractive places.

if camping, where is the tent?

Possibly in a pannier...

EDITED to make sense

[NATURAL ANKLING]

Hi,
Everyones already said it all...............
Your moving quite quick fully laden
Your 70 - 90 " gears are high, you should be doing nearer 18 MPH not 13
Are you a spinner 85 + cadence
Slow down at the start, you should to be able to do a pace thats means you could do three hours straight off ( not that its a good idea every day) and then stop every hour for ten ninutes the rest of the day.
22 - 32 - 42 x 11 - 32 is a sub 20" bottom and 105" top.
Or
22 - 32 - 44 x 12 - 30 gives 20 - 100".
Any gear over 105 " is an over kill making top a wasted gear, highering all your ratios too, making top gear of 105" will lower all your gear ratios (27) making them closer on each front clanger, and still a good granny for mountains.
118" is purely for He - Men who are card touring............................

Your lucky my two day tours of Dartmoor over 120 Miles normally see me at 7 MPH with 35 Kgs The five kgs is for the packed lunches on the first day

[fluffybunnyuk]

The best example is to say I live in London. I want to go touring in the Isle of Wight. Theres 2 parts. the touring , and the getting there and back. Im not interested in the 8mph crawl round IOW right now but the getting there before christmas problem.

Now obviously excluding water,and food, Im loaded with the rest of my camping gear. I dont want to be spending the next week cycling there and back at 8 mph.train,coach and car is out. so it involves some hard grind to get where im going. not least because of the camping grrrrr(not an error it becomes camping grrrrr after hauling it up 15% gradients).

So I start out at the pace i think im good for the distance say 14mph. this happens to be 36/12 or 36/14 depending on the terrain/wind. After a good 6 hours in the saddle(+1 for lunch) i tone it down a bit and keep to 10+mph. Its mostly aero not grinding. I just end up with a deep leg fatigue.

Anyway the point was that I noticed I only used 3 gear groups, and the rest of the cassette doesnt tend to get used. So instead of wasting those rings I was thinking of making the ratio jumps smaller in the areas I do use. This would mean easier adaptation of the gear im in to rolling terrain. So instead of 61,69,81GI I might get 4 gears instead 61,67,73,81ish GI (not facts just example) I dont even use the big ring 48T so 81GI on 36T seems comfy to me.

[axel_knutt]

It's not what you want to hear, but I think you'll find you can go further and faster overall if you start slowly and take it easy for the first day or two until you're fully warmed up. You don't say how long you're planning to tour for, but bear in mind that the speed you can manage for one day is not the same as the speed you can manage every day for a week or a month. I could probably have made it from home to the Peak District in two days if I bust a gut, but I did it in three. On the other hand my time is my own, so my tours are all open ended: I just keep going until the energy runs out, and I'm in no hurry to tire myself out.

[531colin]

Emma...I think I understand what you want.
I like close-ratio gears when I'm "pushing on a bit", but I can stand bigger jumps at other times. For example with wind at back or downhill (if I bother to pedal) its no hardship to go up in big jumps. Climbing steep hills a big jump down is good because the bike slows down a bit when I change gear, and I find I can change back up when the gradient eases by giving a couple of hard pushes to get the speed up before I change up.
What strikes me as a bit barmy is that you don't seem to want to use your big chainring at all....that's the one I use when I'm pushing on a bit.
If I understand you right, at present you use 81 and 69 inch gears on your middle ring, and the next one is 61 then 54. If you were to use the big ring you have 81, 72, 62, 54.... using 16, 18, 20, 24 teeth which will wear a lot better than the 12, and 14 teeth you now use.
I think that's the first thing to try before you start spending money.
(and just a warning......cassette-wrangling can be a can of worms.....http://forum.ctc.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=54328&hilit=wrangling

[fluffybunnyuk]

I dont like worms 531colin but I do like the cut of your jib

Ive always been a bit scared of using the big ring, mostly because 48/16 seems more daunting to turn than 36/12. I'll give it a try next time I go out.

I change gears alot usually with every terrain change, So if i have a slight slope I do like the idea of dropping to 72 GI on the big ring, instead of the 69GI I'd drop to on the middle ring. Its usually the case that shifting down a gear has been too big a drop so it'll be interesting to see what happens.

I made the comparison with a commuter guy i was following home. He was nonchalantly turning 60rpm or less and doing a steady 15mph (probably a much bigger chainring), and I was feeling a bit cheated since I was pedalling 33-50% more and going a touch slower, not that it really matters.

I'm older, and assume that with time and fitness comes more wattage, and I'll be able to turn a slightly bigger gear. Having said that 6 months ago 10 miles took me almost 90 minutes... My main frustration is usually I have to cycle 30 miles to get out of London if i dont take the tube, and its boring, and dangerous. down the A2, over to oval,vauxhall bridge, and up the uxbridge road.

I have to say the one thing that never ceases to amaze me is how I can cycle for 10 hours on the bike and feel good at the end of it if a little tired.I guess that comes from having a good touring bike under me. I also enjoy the fact that being out in the night air I usually fall asleep like a log, and sleep better than at home!!!

On axels point " Its not what you want to hear". Actually it doesnt matter if I want to hear it or not. Its all input and for me Im still on a learning curve, although its not so steep now!!! So I like hearing ideas, its all considered and tried out, and I end up with what works for me. A recent idea submitted was avoiding boredom on this kind of run(getting from a to B in a hurry and not being bored witless).