Last week after another discussion with a friend who just switched over to a compact crank I started to think once again. The ADK is coming up in a couple of months and I may need all of the help I can get while up there. The race will have ~31,000 feet of climbing if/when I make it to the finish. On the way home, I stopped by my parents house to pick up a 50 tooth chainring I had purchased a few years back and never installed. It just sat there new and unused.
I got the new smaller ring mounted up and decided to take it for a spin. I could feel a difference almost immediately but I didn't know if it was a good difference or not. With the smaller ring, I will have to increase my cadence in order to achieve the same speeds which my hips have not liked in the past.
Fast forward to that evening when I got a laugh while reading the local mountain bike forum. There was a guy who announced he was looking to purchase a used bike. Another user offered up one that was one size smaller than what the original poster was looking for and was denied due to it not being big enough. Possibly offended by the denial he replied, "My wife has always told me that one inch does not make a difference."
The following day, I took Le Antique out for another ride when that comment came back into mind. Now I understand his wife was just trying to protect his ego but I can tell you that anything that is round and an inch bigger will always generate a more pleasurable experience. Case in point the smaller ring. After a week of riding around on the smaller ring, I am beginning to lean more and more towards the fact that the smaller experience isn't all that others have made it out to be. I'll give it a couple more days to see if I can get used to it but more than likely I will be going back to the larger ring. Why? Because bigger is better...
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I wouldn't necessarily think that a compact crank or even a smaller crank would make much of a difference on the ADK. But I would think that learning to spin a higher cadence than what you're used to could be beneficial. The heart recovers a lot quicker when it's exhausted (think minutes) than large leg muscles do (think days). If you can transfer some of that stress from your legs to your heart, it might prove beneficial at the ADK. Why do you think Lance beat Ullrich all those years???
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