Viewing 40 posts - 41 through 80 (of 82 total)
  • Road cassettes – what’s the obsession with 11T sprockets?
  • w00dster
    Full Member

    There are some hills where I know I will pedal, in Snowdonia there is a real long straight downhill section (8 miles predminantly downhill but it does have the odd flat section and a couple of small rises) where I hit well over 50mph and my PR is average of 29.9mph for the 8 miles – when I reach 50mph I’ve stopped pedalling – but its the cresting of a hill, building the speed up as quick as possible – then when hitting a small slope slowing down to 30mph, I’ll want to pedal to keep the speed.
    Its rare but it happens.
    (I’d never do the top tube pedalling seen in the tour – but thats because I like my teeth in my mouth!)

    (Section is Ride it Like you Stole It on Strava, after the lump out of Blaneau Ffestiniog on the A470 back to Betws-y-Coed. 8 miles of joy, Well worth doing when its not too windy)
    Again out in Girona I used my 52/11 quite a lot, some great long descents where it was nice to be able to keep pedalling on the straights after a descent.

    molgrips
    Free Member

    I’d never do the top tube pedalling seen in the tour – but thats because I like my teeth in my mouth!

    Lol yes I tried that once, almost had the mother of all spectacular crashes.

    thisisnotaspoon
    Free Member

    There’s also a curious anomaly that lots of people want that mahoosive top gear for thr downhills, where even putting out as many watts as you can manage wont get you much extra speed in return. But would never consider a gear low enough to maintain that same cadence uphill where being able to spin a comfortable cadence makes a much bigger difference to your power output and fatigue.

    ‘I want to not exceed 90rpm downhill, but will gurn up 10% inclines at 30rpm rather than admit that I need a compact and mountain bike cassette’.

    Fresh Goods Friday 696: The Middling Edition

    Fresh Goods Friday 696: The Middlin...
    Latest Singletrack Videos
    TiRed
    Full Member

    I’d be surprised if you’d find much of anyone pedalling when they have hit 40mph

    I managed 200 Watts at 130 RPM in 53×11. The power meter showed I was working. Didn’t quite break the 80 km/hr though 🙁 . Even on a flat dual carriageway with a tailwinf, I don’t often use the 11T in a TT. On my trike in the 12hr I never used it.

    TiRed
    Full Member

    I’d be surprised if you’d find much of anyone pedalling when they have hit 40mph

    Be surprised

    convert
    Full Member

    Be surprised

    With respect that is not you in the tour is it? What I meant was how many savvy pros would bother, not is it physically possible.

    TiRed
    Full Member

    No – and in truth I was surprised to put down than many watts ay that speed. Probably as one extension was loose so I never felt like going for teh aero crouch! I’m also a bit of a spinner though – which is one reason I raced a season on a compact and a tight rear block.

    w00dster
    Full Member

    Convert – I know you intended your question to TiRed, but can you just clarify, you’re asking what pro’s would use the 50 (52 or 53) / 11 when descending?

    You raced? Did you never need to bridge a gap? How about those guys not great at cornering and need to get back to the group as quickly as possible?
    What gear would you think he is in when pedalling?

    Longer version worth watching how the break is made (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPHnqI13vPk)
    Another really good example of wanting the biggest gear possible, look at 1:30 of this video, coming out of a hairpin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUACRu6HfVU
    More examples of downhill pedalling very fast (1 min to 1 min 10 gives a good example)
    And another worth watching, again no idea what gear they are pedalling – but pretty sure they would want to have the biggest gear available to them.

    convert
    Full Member

    woodster – I know what you are saying and yes probably my error of course you can find people thrashing down hills in the tour. Lots of freewheeling even in that footage mind. And this is footage of the pointy end of the pointy end – the remaining 140 odd of the world’s best riders slightly further back off camera won’t have be doing that.

    But again – my point is that whist a tiny proportion of people have a need to use a massive gear (and to reiterate 50/11 is bigger than any road racer hero you might have seen in your youth was pushing) most people just don’t don’t. So why is 12-XX not the standard with 11-XX the outlyer for those that actually need it?

    Anyway, miche cassette purchased with a handful of extra sprockets so I can do 12-27, 12-30, 13-30 or 13-32 by swapping some in and out for about the cost of 2 discounted ultegra cassettes with silly 11t sprockets!

    JonEdwards
    Free Member

    TBH I’m not sure if the aero effect of pedalling over feet level in a silly tuck would slow you down after certain speed rather than speed you up.

    My personal experience is that a “sensible” aero tuck (hands in the drops, chin on the stem, pedals level) is slower in most cases than pedalling. It’s a gradient -v- speed thing and not being very gravitationally attractive, or especially aero, I just slow down if I’m not pedalling. I’ll absolutely accept that it might not be “efficient” over the course of the ride to spin my t*ts off down every hill -v- saving energy there to use on the climbs, but it is more fun going really bloody quick.

    But would never consider a gear low enough to maintain that same cadence uphill where being able to spin a comfortable cadence makes a much bigger difference to your power output and fatigue

    Getting a bit off topic, but I’m very much of the opinion that road biking isn’t supposed to be easy, its supposed to be fast. You don’t go fast by twiddling a little gear quickly, you go fast by twiddling a big gear quickly. If I give myself a little gear I can hide in, then I’ll use it and just be slow. Take it away and I have to just HTFU and deal with it. I’ve played around with smaller gears – inc the switch to compact chainsets – all it does is make me less strong and slower.

    trail_rat
    Free Member

    (and to reiterate 50/11 is bigger than any hero you might have seen in your youth was pushing)

    surely that depends on your youth era.

    trail_rat
    Free Member

    It’s a gradient -v- speed thing and not being very gravitationally attractive, or especially aero, I just slow down if I’m not pedalling. I’ll absolutely accept that it might not be “efficient” over the course of the ride to spin my t*ts off down every hill

    down glenshee south road towards perth there is definitely a point where pedalling is slowing you down and just tucking gets you going quicker…. its north of 80kph though- well for my body shape and aeroness ( not much as i have a headtube the size of a size 10 foot)

    cookeaa
    Full Member

    There’s also a curious anomaly that lots of people want that mahoosive top gear for thr downhills, where even putting out as many watts as you can manage wont get you much extra speed in return. But would never consider a gear low enough to maintain that same cadence uphill where being able to spin a comfortable cadence makes a much bigger difference to your power output and fatigue.
    ‘I want to not exceed 90rpm downhill, but will gurn up 10% inclines at 30rpm rather than admit that I need a compact and mountain bike cassette’.

    I have to agree with TINAS here, I think we’ve clearly got people with a wide variety of needs when it comes to road bike gearing, but some seem to be biasing the their drivetrain towards more much more marginal use cases than others, ultimately a bike that requires substantially more energy to get the rider to the top of a hill is only going to result in a more fatigued rider on the descent. and even if they can push an extra 10-15 inches down the other side, surely they’ll have far less range for all the effort expended?

    What’s so terrible about tucking in and saving the watts rather than trying to muscle your way everywhere an extra couple of MPH Avg on a descent is only worth it in certain racing scenarios, beyond that it’s just going to be inefficient…

    The vast majority are probably not going to benefit from pushing anything much over say 110 Gear inches which is substantially exceeded by a 50-11 ratio…

    Of course what we’ve not really touched on is sub-compact chainsets, if you are using some flavour of sub-compact chainset with a smaller (than 34t) inner ring then I think a closer range cassette that starts with an 11t sprocket starts to make better sense… (IMHO of course).

    w00dster
    Full Member

    I’m happy with a 50/34 and 11/32 for climbing. Thats for steep North Wales long climbs. No muscling the gear going on to be honest.
    But I equally do want to keep pedalling when I’m on a descent.
    When racing crits I wanted 53/39 and 11-23. Obviously no or very small hills. Peloton would regularly rip along at 30mph and the 11 would be needed for bridging gaps, breakaways, sprints out of corners etc.
    I do agree that for a lot of rides and riders they may not use the 11 tooth cog, I might not use it on some rides but will for other rides.
    I like riding fast, so I’ll pedal as often as possible on a descent. Long descents often plateau, I’m not talking about a 45 second 40mph descent.

    molgrips
    Free Member

    t I’m very much of the opinion that road biking isn’t supposed to be easy, its supposed to be fast. You don’t go fast by twiddling a little gear quickly, you go fast by twiddling a big gear quickly.

    This is a very odd attitude – it suggests road biking is inaccessible for those who aren’t already fit roadies – and is immediately contradicted by this:

    If I give myself a little gear I can hide in, then I’ll use it

    I will use the highest gear I can on a road bike, to achieve my training aims. If I’m trying to get a z2 ride and lose weight that is actively contradicted by smashing a too-big gear up a hill. If I am doing high intensity training then I will do it as hard as I can regardless.

    Your smash-it attitude is likely not productive, and rather elitist 🙂

    convert
    Full Member

    You don’t go fast by twiddling a little gear quickly, you go fast by twiddling a big gear quickly. If I give myself a little gear I can hide in, then I’ll use it and just be slow. Take it away and I have to just HTFU and deal with it.

    The road bike world generally moved away from this attitude when power meters became more widely available and our eyes were opened to what was truly the fastest way from A to B. RPE is a crafty sod and very deceiving. Very often for the motivated rider the fast way to the top of the hill (or to the top of the hill after next) is to use a lower gear. Maintaining a healthy cadence for the same power output is far more preferable to muscling up a hill at the same power output but a lower cadence. When freaks like Froome, trained to an inch of his life and weighing the square root of **** all use 32T sprockets to ride up hills I reckon it’s only reasonable that lumps like us do so too.

    The fact you only put the effort in up a hill when you don’t have a choice says more about your mental strength than it does about gear choice 😉

    nick1962
    Free Member

    How many cassettes that get sold see a road race?

    Never mind that where do you all get these tailwinds or am I the only headwind magnet?

    taxi25
    Free Member

    And that is kind of my point. How many cassettes that get sold see a road race? 

    Not many, but I like a 11t with a compact I’m not comfortable spinning to high a cadence so like something to lean on. Riding down this or anything similar would have me in trouble trying to close a gap with a 50/12. And that’s a club or mates ride not racing.

    Check out my effort on this segment on Strava https://strava.app.link/rWrSy7LMI1

    Edit:
    Link seems to show the whole ride, its the Down Down Down segment I’m referring to. Storey Arms down towards Brecon.

    mboy
    Free Member

    Having owned a bike shop, you guys would be amazed just how often Joe Bloggs wants a harder top gear on their bike that came fitted with a 50/34 chainset and usually 11-28 or 11-32 cassette… For every 2 people that want a sub 1:1 bottom ratio, I’d get at least one who claimed 50:11 wasn’t tall enough…

    The problem is, most of them aren’t learning to pedal properly! But for this very reason, the 11T is regarded as a necessity by a target market for whom it shouldn’t really… On my winter bike, 50/12 is plenty enough to be honest, however… I’m not a racer by any stretch of the imagination, but when fit(ter than I am now!) I can get a move on, keep up with the fast local groups even if only for an hour or so. I’ve run lots of different gearing combo’s to find what works for me, but on my summer road bike I don’t want to be without an 11T as even with a 52/36 chainset, I could get dropped on a few sections when the smallest cog I had was a 12T. So I run an 11-30 Ultegra block which suits all eventualities for me. I do have the ability to swap between 52/36 and 50/34 rings though should I see fit.

    Winter bike is running Campag oddly enough (bike was cheap, I’ve grown to quite like it!), and a 12-29 block. Yes it’s nice having a 16T in there at times, but similarly when I get back on my summer bike, the 17-15 cog jump never bothers me, where a lack of 11T does!

    cookeaa
    Full Member

    I’m very much of the opinion that road biking isn’t supposed to be easy, its supposed to be fast.

    Nah a road bike is just meant to be efficient.
    That efficiency can then be applied to some slightly different uses: covering large distances, scaling big tall hills and mountains, going fast (on the flat or downhill) or a combination of all of those.
    As most road bikes are sold for “general purpose” road cycling i.e. they can do most of the above reasonably efficiently.

    It stands to reason manufacturers provide drivetrains that meet the users ‘general’ requirements, over the years they have improved in that regard but as the OP pointed out; an 11t sprocket doesn’t actually seem to fit in with that “General purpose” road bike ethos as they result in a substantially harder top gear that most of us nodders weren’t really crying out for.

    anagallis_arvensis
    Full Member

    I have 48/11 on my winter bike and theres one fast slightly down always tail wind section coming back to town (10km) that i always lose touch with the chain gang due to the fact I’ve run out legs for coming through at anything beyond 110 rpm.

    #Metoo, actually not really I get dropped due to not being fit enough!!
    I wonder if these bigger gears would be more useful if I lived somewhere with more open flowing dscents, most of the ones I ride are short steep and twisty,but a 50:11 might be more useful on peddally descents.

    molgrips
    Free Member

    Having owned a bike shop, you guys would be amazed just how often Joe Bloggs wants a harder top gear on their bike that came fitted with a 50/34 chainset and usually 11-28 or 11-32 cassette… For every 2 people that want a sub 1:1 bottom ratio, I’d get at least one who claimed 50:11 wasn’t tall enough…

    That’s fine, the point isn’t that 11t is too small, it’s that there’s not enough choice. Shimano only make nice cassettes in 11t. Why?

    trail_rat
    Free Member

    Shimano only make nice cassettes in 11t. Why?

    Because you have not looked very hard and they do nice cassettes in 12 and 14….

    convert
    Full Member

    they do nice cassettes in 12

    But to the market I (we) are talking about a 12-25 is no more correct than a 11-XX. It is not a ‘sportive rider’/mamil solution apart from relatively flat places. Its really a 12-28 or a 13-30 that should be the default cassette put on bikes out of the factory with the option to put something with a bigger top end if you really need it.

    whitestone
    Free Member

    Back in the mid 1980s I bought myself a handbuilt road bike – Reynolds 531 tubing with a full Shimano 105 groupset (it even came in its own presentation case), SIS had just come out a couple of months before. Living in the Lakes back then I asked for gearing suitable for the area:

    52-42T chainrings with a six speed 12-20T block! I ask you!

    Going to a compact 50-34T chainset you “need” to go to an 11T at the back to keep roughly the same top gear ratio as 52/12. Of course you don’t “need” to keep that ratio and as noted by several above for the majority of riders it’s way too big most of the time. I run a 12-28 cassette and even that 50/12’s a tall gear for me these days, it only really gets used on long downhills if I’m chasing someone but since I usually ride on my own that’s not a regular occurrence.

    With the steep stuff around here I tend to stand anyway just to keep the front wheel on the ground so ultra low gearing isn’t a requirement “for me”. I suspect that’s a throwback to that 1980s bike!

    OmarLittle
    Free Member

    I usually only use the 11 on the local chaingang where there is a pedally downhill section that will have the group sitting above 40mph – but having it also means if i am sprinting on the 12 or 13 then the chainline feels better than if those were the bottom gears.

    Its not much and i suspect very, very marginal (if at all) in terms of saved watts but it feels better and that is important too.

    molgrips
    Free Member

    Because you have not looked very hard and they do nice cassettes in 12

    Bloody hell why didn’t I find that earlier? A 105 12-30 would be ideal.

    RamseyNeil
    Free Member

    I like an 11 T rear sprocket , not because I am awesome but because I am fairly strong , although not super fit , and at 62 years old am not able to spin at a high cadence but like a compact chainset with a 32 on the back to get me up hills. With an 11 speed casette I don’t find the jumps in gear ratio excessive and overall it suits me fine for what I do.

    LS
    Free Member

    The best sprinters of all time, the likes of Cipollini and Merckx managed fine with less.

    Merckx would’ve used an 11t if they’d been available – riders of his era often used 54 or 55 rings for tailwind or flat days. In the same fashion, Cipo and the mid/late 90s sprinters were the first to use 11t sprockets and were taking them from compact drive XT/XTR cassettes to mod DA ones as soon as they became available.

    w00dster
    Full Member

    Good point LS. Not just sprinters using bigger front rings. Actually have a photo of Contadors bike at Paris Nice queen stage, even for that stage Contador had a 54/42 with an 11/28. From memory he needed to win the stage by 7 seconds to take the overall, no ridiculous climbs, Col D’ Eze I think was the main climb.

    Northwind
    Full Member

    convert

    Subscriber

    You are genuinely spun out on the 50/12 on your block first before moving to the 11?

    You don’t have to spin out a gear for it to be useful, any more than you need to be grinding as slow and hard as you possibly can in a low gear for it to be useful.

    Also, it makes little sense to drop the 11 and keep the low end- you can make an overall lighter setup by keeping the 11, changing the lowest gear instead, and reducing the front ring size, and get better chain length at the same time. Unless you think there’s a drag difference between 11 and 12.

    theotherjonv
    Full Member

    bookmarked for those cassettes

    molgrips
    Free Member

    Also, it makes little sense to drop the 11 and keep the low end- you can make an overall lighter setup by keeping the 11, changing the lowest gear instead, and reducing the front ring size

    The thing is you change cassettes reguarly, far more often than chainrings. Changing rings is a £30-50 outlay, whereas simply choosing a 12t cassette next time it wears is zero capital expenditure.

    trail_rat
    Free Member

    The thing is you change cassettes reguarly, far more often than chainrings. Changing rings is a £30-50 outlay, whereas simply choosing a 12t cassette next time it wears is zero capital expenditure.

    15 minutes ago it was about what OEMs were fitting to bikes…..now it’s about what punters are bodging on at home.

    If your gonna pick a line of enquiry at least be consistant

    igm
    Full Member

    Some people I know “spin out” at a cadence of 180.
    I can’t hold over 100 for any length of time.
    But then I have massive thighs.
    Get me the big gears.

    molgrips
    Free Member

    15 minutes ago it was about what OEMs were fitting to bikes…..now it’s about what punters are bodging on at home.

    My line of enquiry is about aftermarket options. 12t is less widely available it seems.

    ransos
    Free Member

    I find the jump between 34/ 50 far more annoying than my old standard double – it usually needs a shift of two gears at the back to maintain cadence. This thread has prompted me to winder if I should go for something like a Miche 12-30t cassette paired with a 39/ 53. I do like having a fairly tall top gear (currently 50/ 11) as I can go noticeably faster on my local downhill than I can on my other bike with a 50/ 12.

    trail_rat
    Free Member

    Well no they are availible from any shop with a Madison account.

    I suspect what you mean is as I said right at the start they are not heavily discounted because no one really buys them.

    mcnultycop
    Full Member

    SRAM are down to 10t on their 12 speed cassettes now, although with 46/33 upfront.

    convert
    Full Member

    I suspect what you mean is as I said right at the start they are not heavily discounted because no one really buys them.

    You’d have been wrong to say it though. The only non 11-XX options, 12-25 and 14-28, are just as heavily discounted and just as visible as the 11-XX on the box shifter websites. That was never the issue. Your theory fall apart. The issue is that 12-25 and 14-28 are not the solution. The right, and to my mind obvious solution, for a mass market need is a 12-28, a 12-30 or a 13-30, especially in beginner friendly 105 flavour, with the extra sprocket used in the middle to make another smaller jump. Which are not shimano manufactured options even if you went to madison HQ personally and gave everyone a reach around.

Viewing 40 posts - 41 through 80 (of 82 total)

The topic ‘Road cassettes – what’s the obsession with 11T sprockets?’ is closed to new replies.