Subject: RE: Changing gears....how exactly is it done correctly? You have to think of your bike as an automobile with a standard transmission. You start your car in first gear and as you want to go faster, you change gears; change too soon and the engine will sputter...too late and the engine will labour. The same holds true with your bicycle except that YOU are the engine. When you ride your bike, you try to hold to a cadence (revolutions per minute ), when that cadence becomes difficult to maintain you must switch to a lower (bigger ) cog or if the cadence is too easy you must switch to a higher (smaller ) cog. There are different combinations of cogsets and chainrings for different bikes so there is no way to tell you exactly when and how to change gears. For example, my bike has an 8 cog set with the 2 chainrings; here is how I (mentally ) view my gears.
gog x chainring
25 x 39 = low gear, extremely steep and long hills
23 x 39 = low gear, hills
21 x 39 = 1st gear
19 x 39 = 2nd gear
17 x 39 = 3rd gear
19 x 53 = 4th gear
17 x 53 = 5th gear
15 x 53 = 6th gear
14 x 53 = 7th gear
13 x 53 = 8th gear
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