Such a beautiful ride today. The wind was howling, but it was cool and crystal clear, and the sky was pure poetry. I didn't attempt another hilly route, but I was certainly cursing the headwind for the first part of the ride. (The way back, now!! That was fun.)
It's been dawning on me that my bike (purchased in Virginia Beach) isn't really geared for mountainous terrain. Well, I always knew that, but I guess what's been dawning on me is that this is fixable. I ran across something that said that the IM CDA bike course gets up to a 19% grade (what?!!) for short sections and that you'd be a fool to do it without at least a 12-25 or 12-27—WHATEVER THAT MEANS. I'm pretty sure I don't have it, though. I checked my bike for similar numbers and saw "53-39," but I'm not sure that's even related.
(I know there are punier gears out there, because when we were in Colorado and drove up to the top of Mount Evans, I saw a guy pedaling up an incredibly steep hill at about 100 rmp and going about 2 mph. That's the gear I want.)
Anyway, the point is I'm clueless about this stuff, and another stop at the bike shop is in order. Might as well do it sooner rather than later so I can start practicing on appropriate gears.
P.S. I added a grand total of 5 minutes of running to my 90-minute walk. So far so good, hip-wise.
53-39 refers to your front chainrings while 12-25/27 refer to your back sprockets. If you really want to be assured the lowest/easiest possible gearing having a third front chainring (aka Granny Gear) will do it.Though most "cyclists" seem very afraid of it! Ruins their rep I guess. An alternative to explore at your LBC is a compact crankset. Kinda the best of both worlds ... you lose on the bigger gears but gain on the lower ones. Hope that helps!
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