A friend of mine had recently gotten into cycling, and asked me, “I’m confused. Isn’t it that the lower a gear is, the more you have to pedal to move forward?”
“Yes,” I said. “And higher gears allow you to go faster because each pedal push will turn the wheels more.”
She frowned. “So why does the manual for my bike tell me to start in first gear? I couldn’t get going at all!”
I had a feeling I knew why, but it’s just a gut feeling, and that feeling is: oversimplification to the point of wrong-headedness.
I’ve complained before about how men have more than once given me unsolicited advice as I was riding my bike, to the effect of, “Sweetie, it’ll be easier if you go into a lower gear.”
Not only were they condescending, they were wrong. There seems to be this over-simplification in some people’s mind that lower gear = easy, higher gear = hard. Like it was a straight linear relationship.
But the truth is fuzzier. Certain gears are better in certain situations.
The first time I tried to bike up Cedar Hill, I followed the well-meaning wrong advice of “keep lowering the gear as it gets harder” and I crapped out 3/4 of the way up, when I had down-shifted into the second to smallest gear and simply could not pedal anymore. I fell over.
The second time I biked up Cedar Hill, even though I knew it went against the advice, I decided not to go below the 3rd gear. In fact, I stayed in 4th, and I got up the hill. It wasn’t easy — I was still a newbie — but it was MUCH easier than going into 2nd gear. The difference between “a good workout” and “impossible.”
How many less-athletic people have been scared away from cycling by this over-simple advice?
Use the gear that feels best. I recommend staying in as high a gear as you can stand, personally. Because it’s easier.
