What chainring and cassette for hilly races

viperlogic · 25-03-2014 2:00pm #1

Hi all, had a duathlon race over the weekend in which the route had to be changed last minute and meant there were lots of hills! My tri bike has 53x39T upfront and 12-28 cassette in the rear and I was struggling on some of the climbs. I'm more a high cadence rider than pure tree trunk leg power!

What would be the best route to take, bar leg strength training, as have another hilly duathlon coming up in 2 weeks...
- change the rear cassette to a 12x30 thou that will only change the ratio from 1.4 to 1.3
or
- change the granny ring up front from a 39T to a 34T to bring the ratio down from 1.4 to 1.2

Any help most welcome

tunney · 25-03-2014 3:22pm

viperlogic wrote: »

Hi all, had a duathlon race over the weekend in which the route had to be changed last minute and meant there were lots of hills! My tri bike has 53x39T upfront and 12-28 cassette in the rear and I was struggling on some of the climbs. I'm more a high cadence rider than pure tree trunk leg power!

Really which one?

viperlogic wrote: »

What would be the best route to take, bar leg strength training, as have another hilly duathlon coming up in 2 weeks...
- change the rear cassette to a 12x30 thou that will only change the ratio from 1.4 to 1.3

Depends on your rear derailleur, alot won't support 30 teeth.

viperlogic wrote: »

or
- change the granny ring up front from a 39T to a 34T to bring the ratio down from 1.4 to 1.2

Would require changing your chainset as well as the rings as the BCD on a stock 39T is 130 while a 34T is 110

viperlogic wrote: »

Any help most welcome

Go ride some hills.

catweazle · 25-03-2014 3:44pm

Have I finally met a cyclist weaker than me, surely a 12-28 would get you up anything in this country?

viperlogic · 25-03-2014 3:48pm

My legs were fairly shot from a fast 20 mile run 2 days before hand. So combination of that and need to do some hill training. Haven't seen hills in awhile as was on the turbo for the winter.

BennyMul · 25-03-2014 4:18pm

a 39 x 28 is enough gearing for any climb in this country,
as most of these steep climbs are short I would beg to argue that spinning up them is the best approach,

however the "easiest" option if you really wanted to is put a compact chain set on the bike or possibly don't do a 20 mile run the day before:D

EC1000 · 25-03-2014 4:43pm

viperlogic wrote: »

Haven't seen hills in awhile as was on the turbo for the winter.

Does your turbo have variable resistance???

Oryx · 25-03-2014 4:50pm

Long term, just get more used to hills. I think adapting your setup to cope with your weaknesses is a bad idea. Suffer through the next race by any means and then train harder on more hills.

Trig1 · 25-03-2014 5:58pm

I didn't think it was possible to get a lighter gearing than a 12-28... think you may need a little bit of HTFU i'm afraid

Daz1214 · 26-03-2014 10:57pm

Find a decent gradient hill and do reps starting with a low number of reps and build up...1 bike session a week in my plan is hill reps and is a very worthwhile session