I saw the light! (a.k.a. I actually learned a little bike lingo today).This means I can tell you exactly where the Secret Gear on my bike that makes me go oh-so-fast is located.
120 degrees north of the equator!
Never mind. I'll begin now with the awesome terminology I learned.
On the chain rings, I put the gear on the middle setting (my bike is a triple) and with the cogs (I have 7), I put it on the smallest cog (and shift to bigger ones when I go up a hill).
See, wasn't that neat! Can you belive a back of the backer who can only crack 10 mph going down a hill can actually say (err..write) those teams!
If you don't know what that means either, here are the definitinons.
Chainrings - Those are the gears in front, by your pedals. Most bikes have either two or three chainrings. Bikes with three chainrings are called "triples". How many does yours have? The biggest one is called the "big" ring, while the smallest is called the "small" ring. If you have three rings, then the very smallest is sometimes call the "granny" gear. And yes I have a granny gear.
Going from the smallest to the biggest rings will make pedaling "harder" but "faster" given the same cadence. Likewise, going from the big chainring to the smallest(smaller) chainring, will make pedaling "easier" but "slower", again for the same cadence.
Cogs - These are the gears by on your rear wheel. 9 or 10 cogs is the usual today. Here the opposite is true regarding easy/hard, slow/fast. Going from bigger cogs to smaller ones makes it harder to pedal, but you go faster for the same cadence while going from smaller cogs to larger ones makes it easy to pedal, but you go slower. Again, given the same cadence.
This was all explained to me by a nice person on beginnertriathlete.com who is great at helping confused newbies.
You learn something new everyday!
No comments:
Post a Comment