Is it possible to get up hills on a compact set up

[Mike Rudkin]

The hill is there in front of you-never mind the 'inconsistent viscera of your engine' or the gears you could have had,the calculations you could have made-now's the time to grit your teeth,use what you've got and fight the thing!! If you fail there's always next time.

 

[Randochap]

The hill is there in front of you-never mind the 'inconsistent viscera of your engine' or the gears you could have had,the calculations you could have made-now's the time to grit your teeth,use what you've got and fight the thing!! If you fail there's always next time.

In other words, it all depends on that other, even more mysterious component of the human organism: willpower.

 

[Mike Rudkin]

In other words, it all depends on that other, even more mysterious component of the human organism: willpower.

Well.I spose it does-and having made the right calculations for the gears you need,and getting the 'engine' into the right shape.
The 'circle' is never ending.Omar Kyham put it well when he talked about entering the door where two and seventy sects did confute,and often came out by the same door as in he went.

 

[Randochap]

Well.I spose it does-and having made the right calculations for the gears you need,and getting the 'engine' into the right shape.
The 'circle' is never ending.Omar Kyham put it well when he talked about entering the door where two and seventy sects did confute,and often came out by the same door as in he went.

Or, as the Zen koan says:

Before realization, chop wood; after realization, chop wood.

The cycling version might be:

Before realization, spin pedals; after realization, spin pedals.

 

[jimboalee]

So tell me Randochap, when an unsuspecting fool gets talked into doing a 100 mile charity ride, (or even a 14 day expedition from Land's End to John O'Groats) and doesn't even own a bike, who is going to help him select the bike and the gearing he needs to 'make a nice trip' of it?

The unsuspecting fool hasn't a clue.
His LBS man will probably be able to point him in the right direction AFTER some lengthy questioning about the guy's abilities AND the terain the route takes.
How does the LBS man formulate a gearing set-up for the unsuspecting fool's new bike?

Any thoughts here?

In 1995, two lads from work and I did the '14 day expedition from Land's End to John O'Groats' for charity. One of the lads wasn't a cyclist and trained for six months on a heavy lump of iron while I rebuilt a second-hand Cro-mo 'Racer' for him to use on the 'nice trip'.

Did we have a 'nice trip'? Of course we did.

I'm not going to tell YOU what gearing I put on that bike,,,,
Oh, go on then....

I fitted a 40/28 Stronglight chainset to a 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 24 & 34 Megarange 7 block.

Most of the riding he did on the 40 x 15 at 15 - 16 mph.
He had no problems on the hills, even the 15% climbs in Devon - with 'minimal' training.

PS. I've had to dig back through some old 3.5" floppies to find the calc sheet for this bike.

 

[MacB]

that seems like a good range for all round riding Jim. Looks like about 22 to 96 inches with the big ring giving a 31 to 96 range. Set this up like JohnyC, where inner ring is only used for overdrive and whole of big ring is ok chainline wise. That would give you all your riding on the main 7 gears and a drop down to the inner ring for an overdrive 22 inch gear.

If you didn't have the need of that extra 22 inch gear then this setup would perform well on one chain ring only.

 

[jimboalee]

I was thumbing through the magazines in WH Smiths this afternoon and noticed Cycling Weekly have a 'Fitness' special on sale.
Within it, there are several pages dedicated to 'Climbing' and how to improve it.

If I was a beginner, I would be totally bewildered because the only thing they said about gearing was "your bike might have up to 30 gears, so use them all".
What??? I thought we'd all agreed there was 'overlap'.

And how exactly did the bike builder decide what gears to put on the bike in the first place was not even spoken about.
And you say I keep 'Trade secrets'

Sorry folks, if you want to know about bike gearing and what gears suit what bike for climbing up hills, stay tuned to CycleChat.

 

[MacB]

I was thumbing through the magazines

sorry Jim, didn't get beyond this part