picture via mattwitmer
This is the second instalment of the Optimising for Speed series; speed is as important now as it was in the first article and it falls to the purpose of this article to address another issue or two that often hold(s) cyclists back from realising their speed potential. This time, I’ll look at gears – both setup and usage.
The reason that gears are so essential in the discussion of how to get the most speed out of your bike is probably quite obvious: the better you can use your gears, the easier you will accelerate and maintain speed on a variety of terrains (flat and hilly!). This naturally provokes questions about brakes, and I will deal with these in the next part of the series.
Gears
Gears are of course technically part of the drivetrain, but I thought they deserved a place of their own as it's as much about how to use them as it is about setting them up. One of the most common issues is gears that grate against some part of their own mechanism, usually the metal chain-shifting cage above the front gears. To adjust this, find where the front gears' wire emerges from the changing mechanism on the left handlebar, and carefully turn the screw-adjuster until the chain passes silently through the cage. For more on gears, there will be a future article on setting up and adjusting mainly the rear gears. Stay tuned.
As a fairly quick note on what could be a rather extensive topic, using your gears efficiently is definitely an important step in maximising your potential. In general, advice can be given along these lines for a standing start at, for example, traffic lights.
Top tip: don’t change up to early. Start in a fairly low gear (2:3, for instance – 2nd gear at the front and 3rd at the rear), and get your legs spinning before flicking it up into 3:3. Give a little pause for the chain to bite, then push a little harder on the pedals. You will accelerate nicely at this point, which will give you a mental boost as well. At increasing intervals, change up to 4th, 5th, 6th and beyond (if you have a ‘beyond’!), following the same principle – change, pause, and give it some power.
Let’s imagine you’ve made it this far. You’re spinning along with a pedal rotation / cadence of about one or two per second and approaching a hill. An uphill. Resist the urge to gather as much speed as you can before hitting the rise – you will tire yourself out, filling your muscles with uncomfortable amounts of lactic acid, and you’ll expire about half-way up. Instead, maintain your speed and momentum. If you’re up to it, change down two gears almost straight away, put some power into it and take the hill as your own. If you’re not so sure, then don’t try too hard – this is what gears are really for. As you start feeling your cadence dropping and your effort rising, change down one gear at a time, with at least a few pedals turns between each change. Change down the way you changed up: all the way down to 3:3, then 2:3, 2:2, 1:2 and finally, if you’re climbing the side of a house, 1:1. You’ll be at the top before you know it.
Gearing down, of course, is no substitute for building up your strength and stamina, but can provide you with options. I recommend using your gears to the full at first, and then gradually getting into and staying in the higher gears for longer as time goes by. Eventually you’ll find that on a regular journey you won’t even have to dip below about 3:4. Good luck.