I'm trying to choose a right gears for the Venge that I'm building and I think I might need some help. I live in relatively flat area (not super flat, but nowhere near to call it hilly - at most around 600m of elevation per 100kms of riding or 1km per 140km on the "steepest" part around that I know).
I'm currently using the 11-28 cassette with the 52x36 chainset. Two things to note:
- I'm not using 28 ring at all. I'm not using 25 either UNLESS I'm after super hard interval and just want to recover a bit.
- I'm rarely using 11-12 rings. I am using them when I'm doing some Z5+ intervals but I can't really spin them more than 70RPMs
Now, I've been playing around with the Gear Calculators and I think I'm set on the 12-25 cassette - it has some nice progress - 12-13-14-15-16-17-18-19-21-23-25 - it eliminates the cogs I'm not really using and gives me something more to play with in between.
What I'm not sure of are the chainrings - I think I want to change to compact/standard, just to try it. I think it would be good to improve my average cadence (it's around 82RPM average per month, much more if I'm riding on turbo trainer). I don't feel bad with it (I don't really "struggle", my knees don't hurt), I just feel like experimenting. Besides, if I get 5RPMs more I can basically offset the chainset change (in most cases).
I made a list to compare these; I think if I had a compact I'd be able to use the whole cassette (although I'd probably not be using the 25 cog with 34 in the front), and if I had a standard I'd use most of the bigger cogs but not the 12 (at least not that often). What do you guys think? Where do I start?
- Current setup (11-28 / 52x36) vs 12-25 / 53x39
- Current setup (11-28 / 52x36) vs 12-25 / 50x34
- Current setup (11-28 / 52x36) vs 12-25 / 52x36
Marcin