Cassette Change - a Review and Improvements?

I wrote a few weeks ago about the decision to "Man Up" and get a 12-25 cassette for my Giant rather than replace it with either a 12-27 or a 12-28. The reason was really to try to stop being lazy and force myself to use a higher gear and build some strength. Internet cycling forums (fora?) are full of advice about how to ride ("spin" or "grind", "the power is the same", "destroys my knees" etc), but ignoring all this I felt that with the 27 and 28 cassettes I bailed out too soon and looked for a lower gear which I then hung onto for too long meaning that my speed was lower than it might be. There was no real evidence to suggest this, and being an engineer evidence is crucial, but it seemed plausible. So I went ahead and fitted a 12-25 to my Giant.

Since then, when riding the Giant I have also made a concious decision to try to be in 1 gear higher than I feel I would have been before. Bearing in mind that from 4th gear on (the 19 tooth) the gearing is pretty much the same across all the 12 and 11 cassettes the difference lies in 1, 2 and 3 - the 3 biggest rings. As a result my main target is to try to keep in or above the 19 tooth ring.  I have also started to "grind" a bit more and stand up to generate lower speed torque.

I have been riding the new cassette for about 6 weeks or so now, and feel that there is a bit of a change for the better.

I think that this might have been seen today when I went out for an early morning run. The weather was pretty good - shorts and short sleeve top (but with arm warmers) and some but not too much wind.

I rode the same route as I had ridden the week before and within 20 minutes or so felt pretty strong and confident of being able to set a reasonable pace. This route is quite flat - about 1500 feet over 47 miles but features a couple of good stretches of flat fat road where even I can push out a good speed.

At Balsall Common I was at average of about 19.6mph and feeling good. I kept pushing hard and at about 30 miles (Little Alne) was still at 19.3mph average. However from this point its generally uphill all the way. Nowhere is particularly steep but its just a gradual height gain - an example is Pettiford Lane -
   
I am 39th on this segment at 3'15''.

I tried very hard to keep the pace up for the rest of the way home and pushed wherever I could but I felt the time slipping away. I didn't dare look at the Garmin to see what was happening and just kept pushing as hard as I could.

The result when I got home was an overall average of 18.9mph for 47.1 miles.

The ride is here:
 

This route was the same as I rode the week before. This weeks performance was 2:29:52 ride time at an average 18.9mph compared to last week where it was 2:39:07 at an average of 17.7mph. I was to say the least ecstatic with the pace. This is the fastest ride this year (even over commutes which at 18 miles can be pushed hard), and about my 7th fastest ride ever - all the faster rides are over 20-28 miles so not only was the pace high the distance was good as well. And I got 19 achievements (although to be fair on that route I had only ridden it 2 or 3 times before so at worst I would have got a 3rd on many of them!)

Can I claim that the different cassette on the Giant has made this improvement? Probably not as there are other factors.

For example with the better weather and work commitments in my favour I have been able to commute twice a week for the past 3 weeks or so, and been able to extend the Friday return leg to get over 40 miles on the day, and adding this up has given me 4-5 weeks at 100+ miles a week so I am obviosuly a lot fitter now than a few weeks ago:

Regardless I'll take the ride as a memorable PB.

And I am happy with the cassette choice.

Drive Train upgrades:

"Don't by upgrades, ride up grades"

I like to do a bit of bike tinkering - the good thing about my two bikes is that they are not excessively expensive in the scheme of things and I can afford a few upgrades now and then. What normally happens is that I get something new for the Focus and the original Focus parts move down to the Giant. As a result the Giant is a bit like Trigger's Broom - I have had the same bike for nearly 4 years, but the only original parts are: frame and forks; brakes; handle bars, seat post, saddle and cable outers. Everything has either been upgraded or replaced as it wore out (the most recent example of wearing out being the bottom bracket, see earlier).

Rear Dérailleur Upgrades

As a result of all these progressive upgrades the Giant ended up with the original 105 mid cage rear dérailleur from the Focus - a perfectly good piece of equipment and probably a lot better than many people have but my issue was that it never quite looked right, and this was why I had swapped it from the Focus in the first place. I was therefore hankering with changing it. 

I did this by buying a new 105 5701 rear dérailleur for the Focus and moving the 5600 dérailleur from the Focus to the Giant. This was relatively straightforward and did not really have any major implications. Although I expected the 2 dérailleurs to be basically the same geometry and differ in appearance actually the 5701 dérailleur is slightly different. The jockey wheels are further apart that the 5600 model and actually the jockey cage is about 1/2 way between the 5600 short and medium models. I guess this is what is needed to work with an 11-28 cassette range which the 5701 model supports "officially". However I never had any issues with a 5600 short cage working with an 11-28.

Here are some pictures, before and after for the Focus and after for the Giant (I used my phone so they are not great quality):

 Focus:

5600 - Small Front, Smallest Rear

5600 - Big Front, Smallest Rear

5700 - Small Front, Smallest Rear

5700 - Big Front, Smallest Rear

5700 - Big Front, Biggest Rear

With the 5700 deraillieur the chain looks a little short - this is because the chain is the same length as used for the 5600 model and this shows that he cage is longer, however I don't have a photo of the 5600 in Big/Big to provide a direct comparison.

Giant:

Giant - 5600 Short Cage, Big Front, Smallest Rear

Giant - 5600 Short Cage, Small Front, Smallest Rear

Giant - 5600 Short Cage, Big Front, Biggest Rear

Note I don't ride it in Big-Big! Given that I was going from a 27-25 tooth and taken off a long cage mech I took out a few links without measuring up, with hindsight I should have checked. However the chain is almost at the end of its life so I'll measure up a new chain in the coming month or so.

Giant - 5600 Short Cage, Small Front, Biggest Rear

Cassette Selection

I also knew that the rear cassette on the Giant (also originally from the Focus) was at over 6000 miles and that the gears I used most (3,4,5) were pretty worn (there was a noticable deterioration in shift quality and so needed replacing. Again not being a super powerful rider some of the gears were pretty pristine whilst others were pretty worn. However it does not seem possible to replace the individual gears and if possible it works out at a lot more cost than a new one - a symptom of our throwaway society I guess.

The choice of what to get was a much more difficult decision than the mech as there is a choice of 4 105 10 speed cassette ranges to choose from, namely:

11-25, 11-28, 12-25 and 12-27

The gears are:
11-25: 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25 
11-28: 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 21, 24, 28
12-25: 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25
12-27: 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 21, 24, 27

I run an 11-28 on the Focus and a 12-27 on the Giant (originally from the Focus as well). I was not that keen on the 11-28 and really only wanted a 12-28 for the 28, not the 11 as I can't exploit the 11 tooth gear as I am not strong enough. Ideally I would have liked a 12-28.

The choice of a new cassette for the Giant was quite difficult. I use the Giant in the winter and throughout the year to commute so don't do very long or hilly rides. During the Winter of 2012/2013 I was managing with the 27 as the lowest gear quite satisfactorily and even managed some of the local climbs on the 25 when it wouldn't shift down to the 27 on one ride.

This suggested that on most rides I could manage with the 25 as the bottom gear. I also felt that a 12-25 would force me into a slightly higher gear and build a little more strength as it is too easy to bail out onto the 27 or 28 when it was there. I also was slightly keener on the 16 tooth the the 12-25 has that is missing on the 11-28 and this makes quite a jump for an distinctly average rider like me.

The alternative view was that if I rode a 11-28 on the Giant as well I then had a spare for the Focus and had the same gearing on both bikes meaning better consistency.

Any way after a lot of dithering I got a 12-25.  Cosmetically it looks a lot better (see pictures above). I have not yet ridden many miles on it yet but I have commuted to work on it and did not really notice any difference. I felt that I changed gear more often - partly because I found all the gears a little closer and also because I am not as bike fit at the moment as I have been. Only time will tell

In reality of course its not impossible to build a 12-28 or other combinations - although it would be quite expensive.  The biggest 3 gears are all on a unit carrier and all 4 cassette ranges have a 21 as the smallest gear on that carrier, and all use a 19 as the next gear, so given enough money and time one can build a cassette with ant combination of 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 19 and then select 1 of the 4 3 gear sets.