BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

Welcome! While, I don't wear spandex, I do dress like a total dork and drop my chain once and a while.

hi, welcome! wtg with the year round riding. Lots here do it, but not me :brrrr:

Wearing spandex while riding: acceptable.

Wearing spandex any other time: unacceptable.

ALMKLM: unless you rode there.

Bike Pgh is awesome that you all are like one big family, thats for welcoming me in everyone.

Wearing spandex any other time: unacceptable.

Spandex is a privilege, not a right.

When I started riding I thought everyone wore spandex since pros did and now I have several outfits or "kits". Now I stand out riding down Negley and highland. If I need to make a quick stop at Giant Eagle a get snickers. But the are comfortable and I like them even if I look a little dorky lol.

You know, you can always put shorts on over your spandex... no one has to know

Wear what makes you happy & comfortable, especially if it keeps you on your bike. If you need a foil, maybe go with "kits" that have a steelers or penguins or zombie theme - haha.

i used to wear spandex shorts by themselves then i got a bit chubby and switched to baggies or regular shants with a tshirt. for longer rides i do wear spandexy clothes but usually still have the baggy shorts over top. i enjoy having the option of a pants pocket or two.

i see people going through morningside often wear spandex type kit outfits. nothing wrong with that.

i did get laughed at when i left work on friday. i had my panniers and i was wearing regular clothes. i wasn't sure why i was getting mocked, but the people mocking me had asses much bigger than mine. also, at least one of the said persons was in her car in 376w friday afternoon traffic while i breezed along on the jail trail..so in the end i was the one laughing.

"If I need to make a quick stop at Giant Eagle I get snickers."

The goal should be "shock and awe." I ruined some folk's mornings at a Food Lion in Cambridge, MD, when I parked the touring rig outside and went in for lunch and drinks. They weren't prepared for what they saw:

http://a8.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc3/24374_1334492574854_1607271639_783707_954256_n.jpg

Remember, wearing Lycra isn't a right, nor is it a privilege. It's a choice.

@mr marvelous

I usually only drop my chain on my newer bike when I am trying to shift to a lower gear while mashing my gears up a hill.

If I remember to switch gears on the uphill slightly before I need to, I avoid the chain drop.

Good luck and keep practicing!

Pseudacris: You probably already know this, but switching gears before you need to is better for all sorts of reasons besides dropping a chain. Shifting halfway up an incline when you're putting a ton of force on your petals will at best cause undue wear and tear to your cogs and derailleur, and drop a chain, or at worst, cause a chain to snap and for you to have a nasty tumble off of a bike, and possibly down a hill.

/shifting PSA

//I still do it now and again anyway

Not to mention the force you put on your knees.

Thanks, robjdlc. One of these days I will take a proper bike riding clinic and try to improve my technique. Like many, I am self-taught after the point of learning the basics when I was 5 or so. No broken chains or even flats-while-riding since then (knocking on wood...), but I don't doubt I'm an inefficient rider.

There is an art to shifting under power - you can "ease up", make the shift, wait for the chain to engage, and then start pedaling in earnest again. Obviously you can't stop pedaling entirely because the chain has to keep moving for the shift to happen, but slow your cadence way down. If you do it right, the bike will effectively be "coasting", i.e. the freewheel/hub is ratcheting so all you're doing with the pedals is moving the cassette, not powering the bike. But, that means you have to do it quickly before you lose too much forward momentum. It's a subtle thing but it really does make a huge difference.

And, I'd say you should definitely try to stick to rear derailleur shifts only under power. Get into the small ring in the front before the hill. If you shift UP 2-3 cogs in the back at the same time you'll be in about the same gear. That might cross the chain a little more than you'd generally like but it's not a big deal since you're going to be downshifting in the back soon enough. It's possible to shift the front derailleur under power using the same technique as above but it's much trickier and much more likely to drop the chain.

Thanks, salty! I'm going to try your technique. It's only the front that drops on this bike. It also had a quirky "micro shift trigger" with mysterious half steps on the front derailleur. That, and the dumb*ss position of the bottle cage mounting brackets are annoyances on a commuter bike that I otherwise like.

Hopefully these tips will help the OP, too.

salty is right to point out that you should avoid shifting under strain; other good habits, such as downshifting before you climb, follows from it.

Pseudocris:

The "micro shift" is a feature, not a bug. It allows you to match deflection in the chain-line (as a function of which part of the cassette you're on); reduces the clatter. There's a chance that your front derailleur needs to be adjusted if it's dropping.

ok it looks like I don't know how to shift at all. I know I have "STI shifters" on a Trek Portland, I know it's a triple and know I have 3 gears on the left and 8 on the right but finding the right combination is hard to figure out. Any help or advice would be nice. I'm planning on to do Peddal Pittsburgh on the 22nd I'm hoping to shift a little better before then.

mr marvelous: check out http://sheldonbrown.com/gears/

You can print out a chart that tells you what each combination can do. I've found that copying the numbers to Excel and plotting them gives you a quick intuitive feel for what's going on.

Typically on a triple the middle chainring should be able to run through the entire cassette. The small and large chainrings should only be used for (low,high) gears; shift, as necessary (and proactively), around the midpoint of the cassette. The general idea is to not have small-small gears or large-large gear combinations, neither of which is good for the drivetrain. Gear up or down to maintain more-or-less the same cadence (alternately, the same amount of pedaling effort).

@ mr marvelous, the numbers on the left are for your three big chainrings in the front (adjacent to the pedals).

Mine is in "2" most of the time.

"1" is for going up big hills, but remember to put in there before you start straining the pedals (I sometimes forget to do it soon enough and that's when the darn chain drops). "3" I rarely use unless I want to fly down a hill faster.

I have a triple on my road bike too. I find that 90% of the time I am riding around in my middle chain ring up front. If I’m going up a particularly steep or long hill I will shift into the smallest chain ring, but this really only gives you two to three lower gears than you’re middle ring (refer to the chart that Ahlir suggests). Likewise, if I’m going down a steep hill or want to pedal at greater than say 20 mph I will shift into the large ring, but again you are really only gaining a few gears here. The easy answer for me is to not worry about it so much. If you are pedaling too fast/easy shift up – too slowly/hard shift down. The only caveat is to avoid cross-chaining, which is the big-big or small-small combinations mentioned earlier.

One other observation- IMHO, I think most new riders shift way too often. On yesterday’s keg ride I was behind a lady who must have shifted four or five times while going 10 mph along Liberty in the Strip which is very flat. There is something about index shifters that reminds people of their TV remotes. Click, click, click. No matter what geare you pick, you still have to put 'some' effort into it.

BTW, I have a jump stop on my MTB. It works great and only 10 bucks shipped. Theoretically you shouldn't need such a thing, but my MTB got a bit testy about shifting in its old age and it was a quick fix. I haven't dropped the chain once since I put it on, which is way better than being stuck beside the road trying to use 2 screwdrivers to bend your chain back straight enough to work while muttering about how it's "theoretically" it's not supposed to happen.

Typically on a triple the middle chainring should be able to run through the entire cassette.

this is probably the most important and most mundane fact i've discovered after riding 9 years on triple chain rings. my middle ring on my road bike is 42 teeth, and i pretty much never need to shift with my left hand. if your front derailleur isn't grinding on the chain while you pedal at a comfortable cadence, don't shift on the left side unless a) your legs are about to fall off from trying to keep up with the pedals (at minimum force), or 2) you can barely turn the pedals with as much force as you can muster.

if you adhere to that, and you try to keep the same cadence at the same effort (as i think ahlir mentioned), you have pretty much got shifting down, based on my experience.

the other idea i've encountered that i like is that you should be able to accelerate at any moment by pedaling faster. that implies that you can pedal faster in your current gear (it's not too high to prevent it), and that you aren't already at a cadence that you can't increase should the need arise.

Short version, once you ride the same grades enough times, you find out what works.

Most of my bikes are older, friction shift, with two front rings. I rarely switch rings; lower is used for all in-city riding and all hills, while the higher is only used for level or downhill riding where I do not expect to stop very often. If I had a third ring, I'd simply shift into it before I got to the hill in question. Since I don't, I just make sure I'm in the lowest gearing before the grade starts, not caring if I'm pedaling too lightly at first. I know I'll be mashing soon enough. I'll get up it eventually. I've gotten up Negley and Federal a few times.

not sure if anybody pointed out, but the first thing I learned about gears (and from skimming above, looks like the only thing until I re-read this thread more carefully), is to... well, I remember it like this - "keep low numbers together, keep high numbers together" as in don't put L in 1 and R in 8. If you look at your chain and gears and think about it a spell, it makes sense - the chain is meant to be parallel to the gears, and trying to stretch it left-right like the bad gear combos do (cross chaining? I think it's called), is not so hot - metal isn't very stretchy. That's why there's overlap - rather than 1-8 maybe what you're looking for is 2-6: it probably feels like the same amount of work but the chain is not so skewed on the gears.

I suspect you already had that figured out if you're worried about efficiency, but it seems to me to be the most tangible gearing advice I've gotten. Everything else seems to have more to do with "touch" and preference/habit.

ejwme just said the only thing that I would have added to this conversation. I'll put it another way:

If you have 3 (what I call Rough adjustment) gears in the front, controlled by the left hand, and 8 gears in the rear (what I call fine adjustment), controlled by the right hand - then you only need to use something like the following combinations (1 - easiest, 3/8 - hardest):

For steep uphills:

L:1, R:1-4

For most riding conditions/flats:

L:2, R:2-7

For downhills:

L:3, R:5-8

The trick I try to remember is to get my right hand (rear derailleur) to at least the middle, 4 or 5, before shifting with my left hand (front derailleur).

This may be common sense, but this part took me a minute to understand. The reason for it is like ejwme and others have said...so your chain does not cross in an extreme orientation. That's why when you have 3x8 gears, that does not necessarily mean 24 speeds.

Me, I'd be curious about trying some friction shifts on my next bike...I almost treat my index shifters like that anyway.

big chain ring (front), big cog (rear) is the worse of the extremes, because in addition to extreme chain deflection, you can do serious damage to your bike. if your chain is just a little too short, it can seize up, or fall apart, or even damage your derailleur.

Thanks everyone I learned a lot about shifting, and I had the best ride home ever. I made it up Santion Ave in half the time

I am awful at shifting properly. This is why have recently rediscovered my love for ss/fixed. You don't have to worry about it