Road Bike Gear Ratio For Climbing Hills

Road bike cassettes for climbing.

Road bike gear ratio for climbing hills. Road bike rear derailers often come in short cage and medium cage varieties. Your chainrings are the set of usually 2 or 3. Let s take a closer look at the cranksets that offer better road bike climbing gears. Carrying the weight of a heavy bike uphill makes it harder to pedal even in a low gear ratio.

Road bike cassettes will have smaller sprockets with a smaller jump between the teeth sizes when compared to mountain bike cassettes. With almost as low of a gear range as a three chainring setup. Stage 10 of the 2015 tour de france ended with a 15 3km climb toward la pierre saint martin with an average gradient of 7 4. In contrast 39 x 25t produces a gear ratio of 1 56.

Most road bikes will come with 11 12 or 13 teeth on the smallest sprocket and then will have anywhere between 21 and 32 teeth on the largest sprocket. If you wanted to fit an 11 34 cassette you d also need shimano s gs rear derailleur the 105 version c an be found for 36 which has a total capacity of 39t you d also need to fit a longer chain the shimano 105 one retails at 18 50 we ve found that this derailleur even works with a shimano 11 40t cassette 47 99 but don t tell shimano we said that. The lightest road bikes are made from materials like aluminum and carbon fiber which sacrifice some of the long term durability of steel for a reduction in weight. With all of the options available to today s road cyclists it is possible to produce gear ratios that are as small as.

You do lose a couple of gears on the higher end. For the basics on how to change up and down the gears we explained shifting on shimano sram and campagnolo gear systems here. The gears on your bike are your friends when the gradient goes up and using them effectively will make all the difference to your climbing. Chris froome averaged just over 22kph for the 41 minutes and 28.

How to choose the right gear ratios for your road bike gear ratios can make or break your ride so choosing the right ones for you is vital to getting the most out of cycling. For example strong experienced cyclists can use a high gear ratio while maintaining a good cadence to produce more than 200 watts of power while beginning or inexperienced riders reduce the gear ratio to produce about 100 to 200 watts. Praxis sub compact cranksets 48 32t praxis works has managed to fit sub compact chainrings 32t instead of 34t on their current cranksets despite using the same chainring dimensions as a compact crankset 110bcd.