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What size cranks?
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I'm sure this has been covered before, but I need help.

How do you determine what size cranks to run? I'm currently riding 2 sizes.

3 bikes: Road bike, Cervelo tri bike and a cyclo-cross/utility trainer bike. I ride the cyclocross on my CT and spinning sessions on Kreitlers for the winter. It has 172.5's The road bike has 175's, I ride it in group rides and most of the time during the summer.

All this time I thought the Cervelo was 175 until I checked. It's also 172.5 I race and train on it during the season. To be honest, I can't tell the difference between the diff. size cranks.

I ride about 5-6000 miles a year, evenly split between the bikes.

I'm 5'9". I know 175's sound long for my height, but I have a 33" inseam and longish femurs. My buddy is 6-2" with the same leg length.

Am I hurting my performance by training on 2 different sizes? I'm guessing it would help if all were the same size. I'm ready to switch 1 or 2 bikes over. Problem is I don't know which to switch. Any ideas or suggestions on how to determine? If I go by feel, they both work.

Thanks
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Re: What size cranks? [Rick Murray] [ In reply to ]
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Crank lenght, pedal type, shoes and saddle height are a bit like shoe size: There may be small variations but stick with what is most appropriate for your body dimensions. With your riding expereince I would be willing to bet you probably already know which crank length is optimal. Remember that the difference between 170mm and 172.5mm cranks is not 2.5mm as the name suggests, but actually 5mm which is a half a frame size. Any way you look at it, that is a lot. My opinion is find one crank length and stick with it- especially if you are a pretty versatile cycling athlete (you are) and you are doing pretty high mileage (you are).

Tom Demerly
The Tri Shop.com
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Re: What size cranks? [Rick Murray] [ In reply to ]
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http://www.xsystems.co.uk/machinehead/cyclist_crank_length_calculator.html
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