GET THE RIGHT GEARING

Tick off the basics and you'll hit optimum cadence...

When to switch

A high or big gear is ideal for descending or riding at high speeds. The biggest gear combines the largest front chainring with the smallest rear cog, while the smallest chainring with the largest rear sprocket results in the lowest available gear. Cyclists use a low gear to accelerate from a standing start or to climb steep inclines. Changing to a high gear helps you to achieve high speeds without over-pedalling.

Ch-ch-changes

“You want to be changing gears regularly,” says Lipski. “We’re talking thousands of gear shifts over a 60-mile ride. This will feel strange initially, but once you’re familiar with your bike and the gear setup, shifting gears will become second nature. The idea is to keep your cadence consistent regardless of conditions.”

The numbers game

The numbers and gear ratios can seem confusing, but the gear ratio simply refers to the number of times the back wheel rotates for each full turn of the pedals. If you have a chainring with 30 teeth and a sprocket with 10 teeth, the chainring is three times bigger so one full turn of the pedals will result in three full turns of the wheels.

Get engaged

The benefit of having more gears is that you can have a tighter ratio between sprockets, so you can shift almost seamlessly between gears without that clunky feeling and the loss of momentum. “When coaching at Trainsharp, our opinion is that the optimal gearing is a semi-compact set up: a 52/36 chainring pairing and an 11-27 cassette,” says Lipski. “For road racing you would want a smaller ratio (more like a 12-25) and for shorter, criterium races even tighter (11-23).”