Cycling Gyan, Nugget 1

Understanding the cycle gears:

What is the use of gears ?

The gears are provided to decrease the pedaling effort and increase your efficiency.

CHAIN RING(S) – the toothed metal ring driven by pedal crank.

REAR COGS – toothed rings fitted to the rear wheel

CRANK SET – the chainring(s) and pedal crank together is referred to as CRANKSET

FREEWHEEL – the REAR COG assembly is referred to as FREEWHEEL

GEAR RATIO

• The effort required to pedal depends on the relative sizes of CHAIN RING and REAR COG.
• The GEAR RATIO is Number of teeth on chain ring divided by Number of teeth on rear cog 
•  Bigger the gear ratio harder it is to pedal

Most modern bikes come fitted with 2 or 3 chain rings and 6/7/8/9/10 rear cogs. The chain can be shifted to any chain ring and any cog, resulting in different gear ratios.

To make this clearer let us take an example; a typical mountain bike comes fitted with 3 chain rings with 42, 32 and 22 teeth chain rings and rear cogs with 14,17,19,21,23,25,27,29, 34 teeth (9 rear cogs, also called 9 speed)

FRONT GEAR NUMBERING

REAR GEAR NUMBERING

LARGEST GEAR RATIO

When you select FRONT GEAR as 3 and REAR GEAR as 7 you are selecting the largest chain ring (42 teeth in this case) and SMALLEST rear cog (14 teeth in this case) 

The selected gear ratio would be = 42/14 = 3, this is the largest gear ratio and hardest to pedal

SMALLEST GEAR RATIO

FRONT 1and REAR 1 would give the lowest ratio of 22/34 =  0.647, this is the smallest gear ratio and easiest to pedal. 

All the other combinations would give gear ratios between 3 and 0.647 

Selecting the appropriate gear

• Always ride in a gear that does not stress out the knee joints, start with the lowest possible gear and gradually shift to higher gear as you pick up the speed, keeping the pedaling rate more or less the same.
• In LOWER GEARS pedaling is easy, but Pedaling RPM (Revolutions Per Minute ) is high
• In LOWER GEARS your bike travels less distance per pedal revolution as compared to higher gear.
• In HIGHER GEARS pedaling is hard (if speed is low) and RPM is low
• In HIGHER GEARS your bike travels more distance per pedal revolution as compared to lower gear.
• On climbs in general use LOWER GEARING (pedaling should be easy, RPM high)

Coming up ! Nugget 2 - Proper Usage of Gears

Whe