Low Gears and Internet Shaming

[AngryScientist]

In 2024, you can buy a crankset from Campagnolo, in their top tier, flagship racing gruppo that has 45/29 chainrings.

All of the companies have long cage RD that allow really big cassettes.

I would say the industry is responding to people's quest for lower gearing, and we have more choices today than ever before to get low gearing.

Anyone who takes the time and energy to shame someone for not having big gears is an idiot who should not be paid attention to anyway.

IMO

[truth]

Originally Posted by weisan

At the end of the day, this is not about low gears and/or internet shaming, it's about human beings and how we operate in this world.

Fantastic share weisan-pal!

[NHAero]

Originally Posted by AngryScientist

In 2024, you can buy a crankset from Campagnolo, in their top tier, flagship racing gruppo that has 45/29 chainrings.

All of the companies have long cage RD that allow really big cassettes.

I would say the industry is responding to people's quest for lower gearing, and we have more choices today than ever before to get low gearing.

Anyone who takes the time and energy to shame someone for not having big gears is an idiot who should not be paid attention to anyway.

IMO

Nick, which crankset in which group is that? I looked at Super Record and didn't see a 45-29, but I have mediocre google-fu.

What is the biggest cog that is compatible with that crankset?

[NHAero]

Originally Posted by jamesdak

I always seem to keep one bike around with Wickwerks 53/34 setup. It's perfect for some of the mountain climbs I do. The 22 mile up Monte Cristo is a prime example. Very little of the route is so steep that you spin out on the way down. Yet this old geezer appreciates the 34 going up. So the 53 on the descent helps me carry more speed coming back down as you are pedaling a good bit of it as coasting has me hovering in the low to mid 30 mph range. So I can go faster with the 53/11 while not wearing myself out.





Hopefully I'm explaining that well.

That's a pretty nifty set-up. What is the FD, and how does it shift? I imagine that the rides you're using it on are ones where you don't need to shift back and forth between the two rings very much, you're either going up or down?

[AngryScientist]

Originally Posted by NHAero

Nick, which crankset in which group is that? I looked at Super Record and didn't see a 45-29, but I have mediocre google-fu.

What is the biggest cog that is compatible with that crankset?

It's the most expensive one you can buy unfortunately, but my hope is those chainring options trickle down to the Chorus level soon enough!

https://www.campagnolo.com/us-en/sup...DWRLDB12S.html

[jamesdak]

Originally Posted by NHAero

That's a pretty nifty set-up. What is the FD, and how does it shift? I imagine that the rides you're using it on are ones where you don't need to shift back and forth between the two rings very much, you're either going up or down?

Nothing special about the FD, standard Dura Ace.



The beauty of Wickwerks chainrings is how beautifully and quickly they shift. The bridge technology ramps lift a whole section of chain at a time. The best way to describe it is that as you complete moving the shift lever over the chain is already back up on the large chainring. You absolutely do not have to change how you ride to use these.

I've had various revisions of these on probably about 1/2 dozen bikes over the years. I even ran a triple setup with his rings on my Lemond Versailles, another bike setup for climbing.

Wickwerks is well known in the European CX world too for how well they shift. Even Katie Compton was riding them when she dominated the CX world.

Now in the interest of full disclosures the owner of Wickwerks is a personnel friend of mine. But I would not recommend these if they did not work.

Of course since he is my bud, the set above only cost me some "famous" Carrot Cake from a local eatery.

[NHAero]

Originally Posted by AngryScientist

It's the most expensive one you can buy unfortunately, but my hope is those chainring options trickle down to the Chorus level soon enough!

https://www.campagnolo.com/us-en/sup...DWRLDB12S.html

So does Campy make different cranks depending on whether the shifting is wireless or cable-actuated?
And what's the biggest cassette cog available that's compatible?

[54ny77]

funny thread.

embarrassingly, i used to go up hills in a 42 or even 39 x somethingembarrasingly small, that, today.....i can barely huff it up in a 34x28!

then again, when i was younger i was always faster. better looking, too.

progress.

[fourflys]

Originally Posted by weisan

Russ has not experienced the full extent of what human beings are capable of in terms of darkness. If all he is going through is some mockery on the web, he has it easy. I am not saying that this is justified, he has it coming or it does not matter. What I am saying is, we are capable of far worse and on a scale of 1 to 10, he's just experiencing maybe a 3 or a 4. It's important to maintain some degree of perspective when we make judgement or assess a situation.

I had a similar thought when I first watched the video.. but then I remembered what Russ expressed was HIS reality, not mine.. who am I to challenge what HIS darkness is? I work in the world of sexual assault prevention and response.. the physicality of someone's assault can vary greatly and the mental toll it takes on the person isn't always commensurate with the the real or perceived toll on the body.. I could go into more detail, but I'm guessing I don't need to.. my point is your assumption of a 3 or 4 doesn't mean it's not an 8 or 9 for Russ and just because some are "capable of far worse" doesn't diminish other's experiences that you perceive as "less".. also, what's worse, 1 episode of an 8 or 9 or a 100 episodes of a 3 or 4? Death by a 1000 paper cuts and all that.. BTW- there isn't a right answer to that question since everyone's journey is their own..

I know you are a good, caring person Weisan, but your post above comes off as missing something, my friend.. and I probably totally missed something in your post, so I'm probably way off base..

[fourflys]

Originally Posted by 54ny77

funny thread.

embarrassingly, i used to go up hills in a 42 or even 39 x somethingembarrasingly small, that, today.....i can barely huff it up in a 34x28!

then again, when i was younger i was always faster. better looking, too.

progress.

I'd be proud to crest a hill in a 34x28 at this point..

[XXtwindad]

Originally Posted by prototoast

In the "real world" it used to be a thing to run the biggest gears you could, and a status symbol to prove how tough you are. That's really gone away in the last decade as compact cranks and wide range cassettes have become the norm. I can't remember the last time I heard a rider passing judgment on another's gearing choices... Maybe 2012?

But Russ is on the internet and gets money with clicks, so he tends to post deliberately provocative videos, and so he's going to attract a range of comments, both positive and negative. He's not out there posting videos with titles like "these new bike industry trends may or may not be good for you depending on your physiology and preferences" and so not all the comments he gets back are "I'm glad you found a gear range that you're happy with based on your physiology and preferences."

This comes across to me like the "just asking questions" defense. He knows what he puts out there, and he knows what kind of reaction it's going to generate. That's the game. Be happy with it or change yourself.

Yes. Exactly this. He’s in the business of getting clicks - be they negative or positive. “Gear shaming” is a clickbait term meant to evoke sympathy for a condition that doesn’t really exist.

But here we are discussing it. So kudos to him.

[pdonk]

When I started mountain biking the standard was 28-38-48 with a 12-28 cassette, and we would mock people who had a 30 cassette. I could not even think of going back to that ratio for regular riding, but I also have a hard time wrapping my head around 1x 30 x50 drivetrains.

On road, started with the typical 53x39 with a 12x25 cassette and always wanting lower gears for a few of the climbs where I used to live. Today ride with much lower gearing and am happy with it most of the time.

[XXtwindad]

Originally Posted by fourflys

I had a similar thought when I first watched the video.. but then I remembered what Russ expressed was HIS reality, not mine.. who am I to challenge what HIS darkness is? I work in the world of sexual assault prevention and response.. the physicality of someone's assault can vary greatly and the mental toll it takes on the person isn't always commensurate with the the real or perceived toll on the body.. I could go into more detail, but I'm guessing I don't need to.. my point is your assumption of a 3 or 4 doesn't mean it's not an 8 or 9 for Russ and just because some are "capable of far worse" doesn't diminish other's experiences that you perceive as "less".. also, what's worse, 1 episode of an 8 or 9 or a 100 episodes of a 3 or 4? Death by a 1000 paper cuts and all that.. BTW- there isn't a right answer to that question since everyone's journey is their own..

I know you are a good, caring person Weisan, but your post above comes off as missing something, my friend.. and I probably totally missed something in your post, so I'm probably way off base..

This is way over the top, sorry to say. If “micro aggressions” extend into the world of “gear shaming” we’re in trouble.

[AngryScientist]

Everyone's wound up too damn tight these days.

[benb]

Originally Posted by pdonk

When I started mountain biking the standard was 28-38-48 with a 12-28 cassette, and we would mock people who had a 30 cassette. I could not even think of going back to that ratio for regular riding, but I also have a hard time wrapping my head around 1x 30 x50 drivetrains.

On road, started with the typical 53x39 with a 12x25 cassette and always wanting lower gears for a few of the climbs where I used to live. Today ride with much lower gearing and am happy with it most of the time.

Your history sounds like mine.

I will just say, once I get on technical singletrack the 1x 30x11-50 absolutely destroys the old triple. The Triple was better if you were using your mountain bike as a gravel bike/road bike to get somewhere, and the 30x11-50 1X seems like it could never work in a race, you have no sprint at all if you had to sprint at the end of an XC race. I'm not sure how big of a chainring you'd have to go to fix that.

I don't think I ever had an 12-28 on a mountain bike though. I always had a 12-30 or a 12-34.

My problem with the triple was I always found the small chainring almost impossible to use in practice for trail riding. It was like any time I needed it I was almost instantly walking. It's possible that has something to do with the geometry of the bikes that I had that came with the triple though. Because I almost always had to walk within seconds of dropping to the small ring I ended up with the 34-cassette and I would work super hard to say in that middle chainring. The small ring might have been more useful if I had long extended fire road climbs or something. But fire roads IME were always designed for a vehicle so they were never that steep.

For whatever reason I make it up vastly more of the ultra steep stuff on the 1x modern bike than I did on any bike I had a triple on.

The bizarre thing about all this internet hub-bub is I've never seen or heard even the tiniest amount of gear shaming in real life.

Maybe Russ is too isolated where he lives and isn't getting the right balance of the coolness of real-world cyclists versus the general terribleness of the internet.

Also if somebody actually finds a way to make something like a 53/30 double work amazing with no weirdness around front derailleur shifts or holes in the available gears or something that would be great. It's more feeling like no one has actually figured out how to make it work across the board in a way that would make me want to make the tradeoff to have all the range all the time.