Bicycle Gear Ratio for Dummies

Climbing a hill on a bike

We'd been noticing lately that Leaf Group has been "disappearing" lot of the Healthfully.com articles we'd featured, all of which dealt in one way or another with sports. The dead links were, however, redirecting to a newly-added niche site, SportsRec.com. Makes sense, in a way, as did dumping the dross we'd already featured. Leaf did not, unfortunately, get rid of all the worthless content: here's veteran eHowian Jeremy Hoefs with "What Road Bicycle Gear Ratio Should I Use in the Hills?"

Our house cyclists were curious as to what approach Hoefs, an outdoor enthusiast whose emphasis is on hunting (not cycling), might take. After all that question is, at best, ambiguous, given that "in the hills" doesn't mean much when you come right down to it.

As one might expect, Jeremy made the assumption that the OQ wanted to know about gear ratios for climbing and pounded out several hundred words on the topic. We're not absolutely certain he understood most of what he said, though...

Hoefs "explained" to his readers the concepts of

• Power Transfer: Jeremy said that, "[S]trong, experienced cyclists can use a high gear ratio while maintaining a good cadence to produce more than 200 watts of power, while beginning or inexperienced riders reduce the gear ratio to produce about 100 to 200 watts."
• Revolutions per Minute: This time, it was, "Cadence and rpm are an important consideration for selecting gear ratios while climbing hills." Of course, in the previous 'graph, Hoefs had mentioned "cadence – commonly called revolutions per minute." Something doesn't compute...

• Equipment: In which Hoefs says that, "Travis Woodruff, an elite cycling coach, recommends all riders, regardless of ability level, use a compact crankset combined with an 11-23 cassette." We won't argue, except to note that after carefully defining "cadence," you'd think that Jeremy would explain "compact crankset" and "11-23 cassette"! Of course, if he didn't know what they mean...

But the be-all and the end-all of Hoefs' article is the last section, where he wants people to calculate (as if they were carrying calculators with them on those hills). According to Jeremy,

"...a cyclist weighing 175 lbs. with a cadence of 70 rpm pushing 200 watts on a 10 percent grade needs a 26-inch gear set to maintain 5.5 mph on the hill."

...at which our cyclists laughed uproariously: First, no cyclist wants to maintain a 5.5 mph speed (the bike would topple over), and second, "26-inch gear ratio"1,2,3 isn't a helluva lot of help. No, Jeremy, your assignment was to explain how to calculate the friggin' gear ratio, which requires information you never mentioned, including crank arm length and wheel size. In reality, your assignment was to explain only that the cyclist must maintain a cadence of (about) 90 in the seat, less while standing – whatever's comfortable. There's an old saying: "If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit." That's exactly what Hoefs did... but we weren't baffled: that's why Jeremy's our Dumbass of the Day.

¹ technically, the units would be 26 gear-inches, not "a 26-inch gear set."
² Nobody uses gear-inches any more, Jeremy...
³ And finally, a ratio of 26 gear-inches means that the rear sprocket has to have more teeth than the chain ring on a road bike with 700-25C tires. You can't do that with a compact crankset and an 11-23 cassette, dumbass.

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