At 70kg, 310w is 10% above 4w/kg. I agree that could be too much, but then you have to factor in a 2.5 mile descent that will require no pedaling and then 37.5 flat miles. So, that's what I'll continue to test in training, but 10% isn't nuts, not with an ftp over 5w/kg, which the top AG guys have.

But, not saying I can do that. But that's the goal. Did Raleigh 2 weeks after a semester of top-in-classes phd work with a training load (fitness) of 58; at 82 now and getting bike fit/position better which is allowing for the discrepancy between road and TT ftp to resolve some and hopefully more. Was at 5.3w/kg in '15 at 75% of the cycling training load I'll be at for Chattanooga, currently able to cruise at 1:11 pace open water and in the pool and working on cutting that down by 3sec, and getting my running in order which was a meager training load of 17 at Raleigh and will be over 40 for Chattanooga, a load that's put me sub 5:30 ftp pace and sub 4:20 mile ability in the past. So there's my trash talk and call me out on it post race, but will be showing up ready to race with the goal to, for the first time in my racing, put all three together at full ability on race day - too bad we won't all be going head to head.

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So i took my slot for Worlds at Muncie. Hope it will be a good race, hot and humid. Excited to ride up Lookout mountain. 2nd wave of in the morning will be cool.

Depends on crank length.

Looking at the strava file, you really only need that extra gear for 1.5 miles (12-13 minutes) which is less than 7 miles into the bike. The rest of the ascents are easily doable in a 25t.

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I agree, but here's today's play time on a climb using my tri bike to get a feel for gearing. The power is obviously higher than I'll race at, but at that power (currently 70kg), check out the cadence at the grade. You're right that you can just stand, get it over with, and then have better jumps between gears for the majority of the ride. But note, today was on a 172.5 crank with a 50 x 11-36, so that's a gain ratio of 2.8. Just some food for thought.

link: https://www.strava.com/...4/analysis/3697/4292

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Thanks for another data point.

I'm going to have to make a trip up to clermont to get any real hills nearby to test things out. I can download the course file to my computrainer but I don't think its the same.

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nice. I prefer the hills to the west side of the Green Swamp, in the Spring Lake, FL area.

sample bike route: http://www.mapmyride.com/...0-2009-route-6288828
sample run route (lots of limestone roads and shade): https://www.strava.com/activities/104018168

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Yep.
11-28 and 11-25 are the same up to 21. Then it either goes 24,28 or 23,25. Seems like a no-brainer to me. Not going to use those gears again anyway. Get what you need to not grind.

froome rode a 38x32 yesterday. Back in the day it was so frowned upon to have Granny gears. Not so anymore.

yeah...there's going to be plenty of "legal" drafting, leapfrogging from one wind shadow to another. That's the rules, and although not a pure non-drafting race, I'll likely be doing it, trying to observe my legal spacing as well as I can....

They are the same up to 15 not 21.

25t : 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25
28t : 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 28

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Ugh, you re right. the old 27 went 21,24,27.

I love the 16, so the question would be is trading the 16 for a 28 is worth it. Hmm. WPP

And now you understand my dilemma. The 16 is my most heavily used gear.

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I agree and have often found myself contemplating this. I always end up arriving at the conclusion that the difficulty (and penalty) not having the 16 is much less than the difficulty (and penalty) of not having the 28....or higher, especially in a triathlon.

A cool tool I use to help inform this decision is di2stats.com. If you have the d-fly and di2, your ride file records what gear you are in. di2stats gives you reports of what cadence, wattage, amount of time etc you spent in each gear. Even maps that show you where on the course you used each gear. Really cool data there. That way, you can actually quantify how much time you should have been in the 16 vs how much time you spent in the easiest gears. When I ran an analysis of a few different times I raced IM 70.3 St. George with different gearing, you can really see that NOT having the easier gears going up Snow Canyon amounts to a lot of low cadence, high power grind which kills the running legs. Additionally, the actual amount of time I was in the 16 when I had it was not all that much. The compromise gears still provided a suitable alternative.

I'm assuming it's the most heavily used when you're in your 53.

I'd run a 36. With DA Di2, I had no issues at all running a 52/34 on a road bike used for climbing. Ui2 had some trouble; have not tried with mechanical. I had Praxis rings.

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with 165mm crankarms, 36x25 is a 2.9 gain ratio, which is what I'm finding is the as high a gain ratio as I can go for a climb of this nature

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The SRAM 1190 cassettes are far better in this regard:
11-25: 11,12,13,14,15,16,17,19,21,23,25
11-26: 11,12,13,14,15,16,17,19,21,23,26
11-28: 11,12,13,14,15,16,17,19,22,25,28
11-30: 11,12,13,14,15,17,19,21,24,27,30

You don't lose the 16 until the 11-30 group

Drop the 12t and add a 16t to the mix. Mix and match.

What do you think about 172.5mm crankarms and a 34x27 for a gain ratio of 2.5 for 68 Kg with an FTP a little north of 4.1 W/Kg.

Good question. I mean, a 34x28 can get me up 25+% grades seated and talking the whole way even when in subpar fitness, so it seems very reasonable for a 34x27 to get you up about any climb, especially if racing. Other than 10sp, are there any 11sp groups with a 27max?

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I know I could definitely get up the climb with the 34x27, just hoping to not go too much over my target power of 225-230.


I have SRAM etap (regular version) with a listed max rear cog of 28 but have seen that people have run up to a 32 (on the none WiFLi version) on some but not all frames.

So what is the average grade going up that first climb?
How does it go? Same grade the entire way up or ??
I am struggling to get any climbing training in and will just need to live with the consequences.
Work and home life prevent me from traveling from pancake flat where I train .....................

With you being 68kg, I'm pretty sure anything over 28t paired with that 34 front chainring is overkill for that climb. I could probably find a more representative effort, but here's a 3.2 mile steep climb that avg's 3.3% steeper than the 3.2 mile climb at World's on a 34x28 @ 70kg where you can see my cadence - though that last two miles I'm sure I was in something slightly harder than the 28 for anything under 10% grade, but can't remember for sure: https://www.strava.com/...7/analysis/6174/7827 not sure if that's helpful.

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Here you go: https://www.strava.com/segments/1897299

oh, and for getting the hill simulation in, a smart trainer really does do the trick. I mean, erg mode on a smart trainer will make any climb a piece of cake! And setting slope on the smart trainer lets you play with gearing. They challenge race day is holding back, but I am confident that a smart trainer can provide that feedback, too. (btw, I'm selling my Kickr over in the classifieds)

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I'm planning on 53/39 w/an 11/26 cassette and 170mm cranks. That's my Red race cassette - I have a few other lower tier cassettes on training wheels, but don't figure I'll need more gearing. Should be riding somewhere around 3.6-3.7 w/kg for the bike leg. As long as I don't ride over FTP for sustained efforts I should be ok on the run.

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for comparison, that's a 2.9 gain ratio

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Thanks for both of those links. The first link is definitely harder. Looks like the Lookout Mountain climb only has a few spots with double digit grades. Probably will stick with my 27, rather not but a new cassette for one more tooth.

I have a smart trainer that I haven't take out of the box yet. That is a great point and now have the motivation to set it up.

For folks looking to ride the course on their smart trainer:

I haven't ridden the course, so that's someone else's activity on Strava that I previously linked to. I did have a comment on the user's activity for a week or so with some questions, but he never got back to me, so I deleted my comment. Anyone have this already figured out?

best bet? would have to get someone who has ridden the course to turn the entire course into a Strava segment, I think. But, the Methodist church/Lookout Mtn full climb is already a segment:

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/...itness-segments.html

some threads on how to use bestbikesplit and trainerroad to accomplish this:

http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...ne_done_it_P4943210/

http://triroost.com/...t-course-on-my-kickr

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