According to Strava I'm already one of the fastest commuters around here and I expect this one will make me even faster. That being said, there are some guys on my commute that I'll never catch up to. I'm afraid that ship has sailed xD
A few weeks ago I tried to CAT 6 race a guy on a 26'' MTB and when I finally catched up and was about to overtake him, riding at around ~32km/h, he simply shifted up and took off, probably hitting 45km/h. I gave up at 38km/h. On the next stop light he congratulated me on a good effort - the guy wasn't even out of breath. Turns out he used to race on an amateur level.
On another note, do any of you have experience with gearing?
I need to get a lot stronger to be able to push 50/11T so I'm considering a 14-28T or 12-25T cassette as well but I have used the 48T 11T combo a lot when I was riding DH in Switzerland and Eifel. At the moment I have a 48/38/30T Chainring with a 11-32T 8-speed cassette. I ride almost exclusively 48T - 20T/18T/15T and only need to shift into 48T - 13T when I get up to 45km/h which doesn't happen too often and 11T is reserved for over 50km/h which basically only happens down hill and hills are a rare breed around here.
I also don't need the 30T chainring (only used it once or twice since I got the bike...), so I'm thinking a 36T ring instead of the 34T one would suffice. I can push 38T-28T up a 13% incline without the need to get out of the saddle but it's hard work. I can always swap the chain rings when I'm touring mountains.
