Advice please!!!

[dereksheph]

I recently took ownership of a new Nomad Mk2 which I am hoping to take on my round the world trip starting next summer. Apart from the test ride at SJS in Bridgwater and lots of research, I am a newcomer to both Rohloff gears and such a heavy bike. I added the Son hub and lights as well as the heavyweight racks. Here's the problem.... I'm struggling to climb on the bike! I recently started a three day trip from my home in Elgin to Dunoon. Yes, lots of ups and downs but nothing that on my Ridgeback Panorama I would've considered daunting. I managed two days riding then had to call for the cavalry!!! I cramped up on both legs and was completely shattered after a day and a half. I am no Froome but regularly make both UK and European trips fully loaded. I'm also in reasonable shape for an oldie. Day trips around the relatively flat areas of Moray are fine, but any extended climbs really bust my legs.
I'm now wondering if Rohloff just isn't for me. Should I have opted for a LHT ? Do I just need to get used to the Rohloff ? Or should I join a winter spinning class and get myself stronger?
Has anyone had the same experience? Can anyone offer any advice. Obviously, I have a huge amount of investment in this trip next summer and have to be certain that my bike and I will get on together! I do have until January to hand the bike back but I really like the robustnes and feel of the bike when it's cruising along on the flat.

Many thanks for any replies.

[julk]

What tyres are you using?
I found moving from Marathon XR to Dureme made my Thorn easier to ride and more comfortable.

What chainring/sprocket combination are you using?
It may be worth tuning the combination to give a lower gear range.

I hope you get to enjoy riding uphill fully loaded.

I have to confess I have walked up some parts of hills when cycle touring fully loaded and yes, you do get fitter as the days go by.
Julian.

[mickeg]

I agree with everything Julk said.  But while I think tire selection is important, when it comes to slow steady climbing up a hill, at very slow speeds on steep hills the tires are less important because you are going so slow.  At that point the gear ratio and steepness are the critical factors.  Tire selection is more important on flatter terrain where you are at higher speed.

I have pushed fully loaded touring bikes up many hills.  On one tour I had an inclinometer on my bike and every time it got to 9 percent grade, I got off and pushed.  I need about 3.5 miles per hour minimum speed to maintain good directional and vertical stability.  If the hill is too steep, then 3.5 mph gets my heart rate up to a rate that I do not like to have.  But pushing, I can slow down to a speed that matches my progress with my desired exertion level.

Rohloff and derailleur gearing will both get you up the same hills, it is a question of your gear ratio.  For riding around home unladen on my Nomad, I use a 44T chainring and 16T sprocket, but for a heavy load on a bike tour I use a 36T chainring (also with a 16T sprocket) instead.  I assume you have a 17T sprocket as that is the typical one sold by SJS, but what is your chainring size?  My Nomad with the 44T chainring has a lowest gear of 20.1 gear inches, with a 36T chainring the lowest gear is 16.5 gear inches.  My Sherpa with a 24T chainring and 11/32 eight speed cassette has a lowest gear of 19.3 gear inches.  I suspect most Sherpas have a slightly lower lowest gear than mine as I have a 24T chainring when I suspect the norm is a 22T.  If I had a 22T, that would give me a lowest gear of 17.7 gear inches with that cassette.  My rando bike which I never put a heavy load on has a lowest gear of 25.1 gear inches.

I used to complain about the weight of my Nomad, but this past June and July when I spent a month in Iceland, the bike was so solid carrying a heavy load that I quit complaining about the weight.  It is important to have a solid bike when carrying a lot of stuff and I did not regret having a Nomad on that trip.  I would not recommend a Long Haul Trucker, I used to have one and I finally got rid of it.  If you wanted a lighter bike than your Nomad, perhaps a Raven Tour with Rohloff or a Sherpa with derailleurs?  But if you go lighter, your capacity goes down too.

[dereksheph]

Thanks for the replies guys!

Yes, it is a 44T chainring and a 17T sprocket. The Duremes also came recommended. Perhaps the changes you made might also work for me. I am no expert on gear ratios etc and have no worries about getting off and pushing if necessar. I'll give SJS a shout and ask what they're thinking. My main concern is that I'm not really carrying a huge load...28Kgs approx which I would normally have no issues with at all ! I am determined to make the Nomad work for me if at all possible as I've been coveting this bike for a long time. 

[Dave B]

Although the Nomad is not a fast bike it is a great bike! Tyres make a massive difference.  I use supremes for my daily communte,  and switch to duremes for touring. Mondials are also  a heavy duty option. Climbing is simply a matter of dropping down the gears and taking in the scenery. You won't win a race on a Nomad but you will get there in comfort.

[martinf]

I don't think it's the Rohloff. I have been using hub gears (as well as derailleurs) for decades and, when bikes and tyres are similar, I don't notice huge differences in efficiency (which I estimate by comparing average speeds) between most hub gears and decent derailleur setups.

The Nomad is a very heavy bike. I wanted one after my 2011 tour, but was persuaded by Andy Blance at SJS/Thorn to get the lighter and slightly less robust Raven Tour instead, as I don't intend to do round the world touring.

But once you add all the luggage for a long tour the extra weight of the Nomad shouldn't make a huge difference.

For me, the two biggest factors affecting riding efficiency are the riding position, where I find drop bars more efficient than most other bar setups because of the better aerodynamics, and tyres. Very robust tyres suitable for round the world touring are much harder to pedal than the same size tyre in a lightweight but less robust model. So if your Nomad has expedition tyres and flat bars, on normal roads I would expect you would have to ride slower and use lower gears than on your Ridgeback Panorama.

Until I bought my Thorn, my long-distance tourer was an old mountain bike, with a frame about the same weight as the Nomad, but not designed specifically for load carrying.

Before using it on my last long tour in 2011 I modified this bike with drop handlebars, the lightest fat tyres I thought I could get away with (Marathon Supreme, but the Marathon Dureme recommended by Julian are tougher and only slightly slower), and changed the (derailleur) gearing to be as low as possible. Timing before and after rides, the bar and tyre changes combined made about a 10% improvement in average speed.

I never bothered when I was younger, but in 2011 I also trained specifically, starting about 6 months before my tour and doing 50 km loops about twice a week as fast as I could, with occasional longer rides when time permitted.

To ride the heavy bike (39 kg with luggage at the start of the trip) up the mountain passes in the Pyrenees and Picos d'Europa, I had an 18" lowest gear, which I used often.

On my current Thorn Raven Tour I specified 38x16, which gives a lowest gear of 17".

[mickeg]

My 36T chainring and 16T sprocket has a ratio of 2.25.  Not much different than the 2.375 ratio that MartinF has.  I weigh about 80 kg.  You did not say if you are over or under 100 kg.  Rohloff has a specification for minimum ratio.
https://www.rohloff.de/en/technology/workshop/sprocket-ratios/index.html

I picked my chainring ratio of 36T to 16T to give me a cadence of 72 at 3.5 miles per hour in my lowest gear.  Thus, I used some logic in my planning, as a cadence of less than about 72 is not very smooth so I set that as the minimum that I wanted to pedal at for sustained hill climbing at my slowest speeds.

28 kg is a pretty good load.  Add a few more kg for water and food, and you want a pretty good bike.  The Nomad is rated for roughly double that luggage weight.  I suspect that I have had close to 28kg on my Sherpa and it handled it fine, but that was on a good quality road.  I would not have wanted to have my Sherpa on some of the rougher roads with that size load, but my Nomad handled that on the bad roads just fine.  Also I used 57mm wide tires on my last trip with my Nomad, my Sherpa is limited to about 50mm with fenders.

There are two kinds of Duremes, the old ones that I think are discontinued rolled quite smoothly with little rolling friction and the tandem rated ones that roll slower.  I have both.  The tandem one I bought, not realizing that it was the heavier stiffer tire until it arrived in the mail.  I have used the tandem rated tire on the front but I did not want to put it on the back because I was afraid it would have a lot of rolling resistance with a load on it.

For touring on my Nomad I used 57mm wide Marathon Extremes, they have been discontinued a few years now.  I thought that they roll pretty good on pavement (tarmac) but also had enough tread to work reasonably well on gravel.  On pavement they were noisy but I could live with that.

If you want to see some photos of my Nomad, see this link.
http://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=11917.0

[dereksheph]

Many thanks Mickeg...lots to think about ! The differences in chainrings and sprockets makes a lot of sense ! I'm just back from a unladen ride up a couple of steeper local hills and, although much tougher than my morning ride on the Panorama, I managed  much better. Perhaps there's a "getting to know you " period with changing to Rohloff ? I believe a part of the issue is probably my attitude to climbing whilst touring. A less aggressive and a more steady approach might help. I was still down to first gear on part of the climb and was really blowing hard ....and that was unladen!!!!!. Add 30 Kgs and I could be in trouble:). I suspect there will  be still more tweeking to come....

All advice is greatly appreciated guys - your experience is absolutely invaluable !

[JimK]

It's not clear why there is such a big difference between your two bikes, climbing the same hills! The first question - do you know the difference between the lowest gears on the two bikes? Looks like the low gear on your Nomad, with a 44x17, is 18.8 inches http://www.sheldonbrown.com/gear-calc.html

what's the low gear on the Panorama?

Also, do you stand when you climb? I don't know if it matters, but posture could come into play somehow.

Another possibly relevant bit: how much do you weigh? I weigh about 180 lb so I figure the extra weight of the Nomad etc. doesn't matter too much. If I were more like 140 lb, a lighter bike would be more noticeable!

[mickeg]

...
Also, do you stand when you climb? I don't know if it matters, but posture could come into play somehow.
...

Good point on posture.  I use drop bars on my Nomad, Sherpa, and my 700c bikes.  But Thorn suggests flat bars on the Nomad, which probably results in a different posture. 

Are the bikes being compared using different bar types?

I only have one flat bar bike (my errand bike) that I do not use for hill climbing, so I really have no real experience climbing hills with flat bars.  Could that be a difference?

[dereksheph]

Hi,

Yes, my Nomad has flat bars with the ergo grips and my Panorama has drop bars so posture may well be a contributor.  I know the   Panorama has 48/36/26T Chinrings and Shimano Cassette 11-32 9speed. I'm afraid the calculations are a mystery to me. I weigh 196 lbs and am 6 feet tall.I also try to stay in the seat when climbing only getting up if I'm really struggling.

The rohloff obviously has less gears but  I also find there isn't the fine tuning I can get with the Panorama on which I very rarely if ever get down to the lowest gears and climb most gradients on the middle chainring I get onto the smallest chainring when hauling up longest mountain roads or when I'm absolutely knackered.

D

[JimK]

700C wheels, I do believe, so 26x32 gives a 22.1 inch low gear... I let Sheldon do the work!

But if you are not using the lowest gears, hmmm, another possibility is that you're picking the gears somehow by feel, and you haven't got the feel of the new gears yet. Are you watching your cadence? Seems like you want to be putting the RPM and torque at whatever comfortable level by tweaking the gears, and then compare the speeds. I think you can analyze the effectiveness of the bike by considering several aspects.

The mechanical bit is how efficiently power at the pedals is converted to power at the wheel. The bikes shouldn't be significantly different unless there is some problem like rubbing brakes.

Weight and aerodynamics and suspension etc. will govern, for a given road, how power at the wheel turns into speed. For example, the Panorama has 32-622 tires I guess. Those are going to be a lot more efficient if the road is smooth, but not so easy on rough stuff. 

There there is bike fit, posture, gear range, etc. These govern how effectively you can get horsepower to the pedals.

Definitely worth playing with the tires. Put on some 35mm lightweight slicks. One of these days I am going to try the Compass McClure Pass or like that.

[dereksheph]

Thanks for the advice Jim. Can you explain to me the difference in lay man's terms the difference that a 22.1 inch lower gear will be to a 18 inch lower gear ... in terms of the effects when climbing  ?

[JimK]

Well, at the same speed, an 18 inch gear will have you pedaling about 20% faster than a 22 inch gear, and applying 20% less torque! How desirable that might be, is really hard to say. People ride up remarkable steep hills without having low gears! The general advice is to save your knees by keeping your torque low. It's not just a question of speed... you need a certain amount of torque just to stay in place when you're on a hill!

Here's another game. How steep a hill can a person climb? That's the point of low gears, after all! Suppose I want to keep a cadence of 60 rpm. That's 3.9 mph on the Panarama, or 3.4 on the Nomad. How steep a hill can you climb at those speeds?

Let's use http://www.bikecalculator.com/  Suppose you are 190 lb and the bike + luggage are 80 lb. Suppose you are comfortable with a steady 120 watts power. You can climb a 5.7% grade with the Nomad, or a 4.9% grade on the Panorama. The steady 120 watts might be what you can sustain for a half hour climb up a mountain. For just a couple minutes you can likely do more. Hey, Wiggins can do like 400 watts for half an hour! It's really an individual thing!

[David Simpson]

[Jim posted while I was typing up this reply, but I'll post it anyway even though I am repeating some of what Jim has said.]

For climbing, there is quite a difference between 22-inch and 18-inch. Going from 18-inch to 22-inch is a 22% increase in the distance traveled on each pedal stroke. (It is a coincidence that both numbers are 22.) Put another way, if you pedal at 80rpm with the 22-inch gearing, in the 18-inch gearing you would to pedal at 98rpm to be at the same speed.

By comparison, on your Panorama, going from the middle chainring (36-tooth) to the big chainring (48-tooth) is a 33% increase.

Your comment about not using the lowest gears on your Panorama suggests that you are a "masher" (pedal more slowly, perhaps standing on the pedals), rather than a "spinner" (pedal faster in a lower gear). Yet you mention that you like to stay in the saddle while climbing. So I'm not sure what your riding style is. If you like to use your lowest gear on the hills, and spin your way up, then I would suggest switching to a 40t chainring. (I believe that you currently have a 44/17 combination.) If you prefer being in a higher gear on the hills, then keeping your 44t may be better.

I am a spinner, and I commute up a big hill on my Nomad. I have a 38t chainring and 16t sprocket, which is around 17 or 18-inch gearing. If you have a 17t sprocket, then having a 40t chainring would produce almost the same ratio. (In fact, I had the 40/17 combination until I got my Chainglider. They don't make a Chainglider for a 40t chainring, so I switched to the 38/16 combination.)

- DaveS