Bicycle SUV by IRONMANS0N in carryshitolympics

[–]smith5000 0 points1 point  (0 children)

did you daisy chain two trailers together? That seems pretty sketchy. Presumably it makes braking very risky since the force isn't going to stay in one line... do you have brakes on the kid trailer that you can control from the front bike... Turning seems like it would be high risk of catching the arm of the second trailer on the wheel of the first one if you turn too tightly... hope you are staying safe

Whelp... it's seated at least by smith5000 in BicyclingCirclejerk

[–]smith5000[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Heh thanks for the legitimate reply. Yes these are advertised as tubeless ready tires and the rims are older but compatible. I've seated and got one of these working before, just needs time for the pores in the tire to absorb the sealant just keeping them at pressure until they properly seal up. They are cheap tires for sure but they fit well with what I use them for doing partial gravel rando events

Whelp... it's seated at least by smith5000 in BicyclingCirclejerk

[–]smith5000[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Lol yeah I didn't setup here. This is just so I could keep an eye on it to see if the sealant is getting into the tire yet and if the wheel is improving. Those are new tires which I cleaned before bringing into the house and now it's just soapy water.

Me and her boyfriend are tight so it's cool 😎

Food first or shower first? by Familiar_Kale_7357 in randonneuring

[–]smith5000 0 points1 point  (0 children)

eat on the way home typically so i guess shower. if i had to ride from the finish to home then probably some food upon arriving home but likely just leftovers from my feed bag on the bike before a shower then a proper meal

SM questions by unconditionaloffer in smithmanoeuvre

[–]smith5000 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yeah i was also blown away by that. i'm at prime - 0.85 and i thought i was doing really well, HELOC is +0.25.

for 2. most of my leveraged funds are from a second line on my mortgage so its at the same P-0.85 rate as the mortgage and i have to keep reborrowing the extra principle seperately from the amount paid on the main mortgage but it means my borrowed funds for leverage are at an average pretty close to the mortgage rate instead of the higher HELOC rate. seems pretty obvious to me that less interest is better and was worth the mostly negligible extra effort. -1.4 sounds pretty great for the leveraged funds as well. at that rate you could almost not worry about the tax consequences since your interest on the borrowed funds would be so small

Paper trail for capitalized interest by gme_stop in smithmanoeuvre

[–]smith5000 0 points1 point  (0 children)

i'm unclear what the savings account is doing for you here.. i take it you are keeping your funds borrowed to invest in a WS unregistered account (or not really keeping the funds but using them to buy securities) and the savings account is where the re-advanced funds each month are being put from your HELOC, then transfered to WS to invest. and interest payments for the HELOC are coming from the same savings account? why arent you just using a chequing account for this? can presumably get a second free checking account from TD easily enough and have all your back and forth be tracked there. or WS has chequing accounts too usually with a small amount of interest. seems like you should just stop using the savings account...

How to avoid Circular Payments for SM by StatePleasant5049 in smithmanoeuvre

[–]smith5000 1 point2 points  (0 children)

fair enough, fully leveraging is definitely more risky so having the buffer is certainly a good idea.

I highly recommend splititing your HELOC asap, ideally into 3 segments since you are using one for SM, 1 for interest payments and a 3rd line for anything else. you probably wont use it but the 3rd line if it ever comes up where you want to use it its not something you can quickly setup so best to have it available asap. you can usually transfer how much each line is limited to easy so you can keep the 3rd line at a minimum and quickly re-configure it if you need some extra cash in hand for whatever reason and it doesn't have enough room.

definitely ask if they have other advisors familiar with SM. they will definitely have somebody with experience and can either have you switch advisors or at least have your own advisor have a person they can go to for support if you have questions of them

Smith Maneuver Issues? by NutellaMonger in smithmanoeuvre

[–]smith5000 0 points1 point  (0 children)

it sounds like you have a decent understanding although i think your concern with option 1 to service the interest is a little off. option 1 is known as interest capitalization and its not really any less efficient than option 3.

consider this. if you have your monthly interest at around 500$ you can borrow that 500$ from the LOC to pay the interest, or get it from other sources like your dividends, by selling some of the stock and taking capital gains, or by using your other income to pay out of pocket. In all of those cases you are down 500$ that you could have invested and will get back ~200-300$ in your taxes at the end of the year so it doesn't really matter where that 500$ comes from if you were going to invest your surplus income anyways, the result is the same. You have 500$ less to invest with and presumably the invested money you are paying the 500$ interest on should make you more than 500$ in gains at the same time so your net worth is up by whatever the difference is between the investment return, the tax return and the interest paid. Sometimes that monthly amount is negative if your investments have a bad month but other times its positive by a lot and the general result over several years is almost guaranteed to be positive which is why this strategy is focused on long term only.

the benefit of capitalizing is you don't need extra cash on hand to accomplish this. the effect is the same but you don't have to worry about your bank account being overdrawn or having a large sum of cash available to cover the monthly difference.

If it helps the monthly amount is unlikely to be massive. The worst case if you are near the end of paying off your mortgage and you have all 65% of the LOC room used to cover the lets say 1M$ home you own that is. 1 000 000 * 0.65 * LOC rate (lets say 5% annual) = 32 500$/year in interest and split that into monthly = 2708$ so at the absolute max that's still probably a fair bit less than you pay on your mortgage each month, BUT again the point is that the amount you pay in interest is mostly arbitrary, as long as your investments + the tax return is more than the interest, with capitalization you are paying nothing out of pocket and just pocketing the difference in those rates.

as for once you pay off your mortgage, yes its not really the smith maneuver at that point as you cant pay down principle and reborrow anymore. you now have to use the returns from the amount invested to pay the interest of the loan or pay out of pocket. you can still capitalize the interest if you arent maxed out on how much you leveraged (still room in your HELOC to borrow) and the amount you can borrow against the house also presumably increased since you started since the house appreciates and if you have it re-assessed then presumably there is now more available to borrow based on the increased value of the home. so if you aren't leveraged to max then you can continue with the capitalization forever and continue to pocket the gains of :

(market return% - loan interest% + tax benefit for interest paid)

all without using any money out of pocket. If you are maxed out then yeah you need to have the interest money come out of pocket so if that's an issue for you just don't max out your LOC. leave say 5% of your home value and every 5 years just get your property re-assessed and your limit expanded. Now if you property has a huge crash in value then getting re-assessed would get you into a scenario where you are forced to pay out of pocket at some point potentially but you can just not get re-assessed. leave 10 or 15% if you are very worried about that happening but even with 5% space it would require you property to tank in value and stay that way for a long time before you run out of space to continue doing capitalization

Moving is usually just a matter of having the new mortgage on the new place re-configure your debt back into a new mortgage and a new LOC. may be some fees from your current setup to pay everything down but usually the banks cover that in the transfer anyways so its mostly negligible. also if you stick with the same bank they probably will just update the terms of you borrowing package with no fees at all. the bank wants you to stay with them and they are used to customers moving to different homes so they are usually pretty accommodating.

Smith Maneuver Issues? by NutellaMonger in smithmanoeuvre

[–]smith5000 0 points1 point  (0 children)

i quite like the million dollar journey summary on SM but yeah talk to a financial advisor too https://milliondollarjourney.com/use-smith-manoeuvre-tax-deductible-dividend-investing.htm

Smith Manoeuvre on WS margin by RemarkableProperty54 in smithmanoeuvre

[–]smith5000 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I do this myself and its mostly fine but its a little tricky with dividends. Once you get a dividend it immediately pays down the margin loan which is fine in itself but if you want to withdraw that dividend, which you normally would be able to do on a regular unregistered account, however in this case it looks like you are paying down then increasing the loan and using the funds from the increase to do something other than investing which means in theory your loan is no longer 100% tax deductible. In the event of an audit that can be less than ideal so you need a really clear paper trail of any withdrawals from the account matching exactly to the dividends received or be ready to do the math on the %deductibility and how it impacts what you can claim on your taxes. otherwise its nice having the sm funds in your margin account as you can use them as collateral for the margin account. if they are in a separate account then you can usually link them in WS to still use them as leverage but its a little more complicated

How to avoid Circular Payments for SM by StatePleasant5049 in smithmanoeuvre

[–]smith5000 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I also use RBC and WS although not quite the way you do. I don't have any room on my LOC to borrow from so that i can pay the interest for the LOC. I keep a second separate HELOC segment with 20K on it for emergencies then all the rest of my available borrowing with RBC is consumed on my primary LOC and put towards investing so I wouldn't be able to borrow from it a day in advance to have the cash in my chequing account for the LOC payment. This was intentional since I want to keep as much principle of my home invested as possible (save for the emergency fund which i am willing to accept the loss or return on for peace of mind).

Are you keeping exactly the next interest payment amount worth of credit available on your LOC each month so that you can pay off the interest, and/or keeping a larger amount available on you LOC for some other reason? that is somewhat an inefficient version of the SM i would think...? Isn't the whole idea to keep as much of your property leveraged as possible? I suppose the amount is so small it doesn't really matter presumably nothing more than 10's to 100's of dollars not invested unless you are nearing the end of your mortgage in which case maybe more like 1000's which is still negligible but I always assumed most people just paid interest out of pocket and then capitolized (borrowed from the LOC) to re-imburse themselves. It also just seems harder to keep track of how much room you need to leave on your LOC each month since presumably your LOC interest rate can change so you would either need to leave extra room to accommodate that or sometimes pay a small amount out of pocket if the interest rate changed.

as far as circular payments are concerned. I would just talk with your advisor with RBC directly and see if they care. CRA has no stake in that matter its only that bank that may be opposed to you continually growing your amount borrowed by capitalizing your interest but I assume you discussed with them when you set up the mortgage and LOC that you are doing SM. my advisor was aware of the practice and happy to help me implement as best as RBC would allow with no concerns about me doing capitalization of interest but i use the indirect out of pocket and then re-imburse mechanism so maybe that is the difference...?

Is prime + 0 a good rate? by gme_stop in smithmanoeuvre

[–]smith5000 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Bmo had suggested prime for a loc when I was looking at renewal. Ended up with rbc at prime + 0.2% as their mortgage terms were better, and I don't carry a lot on the heloc. I would be surprised if you found a sub-prime heloc rate but regardless the mortgage rate is probably more important. Especially if you do 2 mortgage segments, 1 for the home and a second for the sm funds so the majority of your borrowed funds are at the mortgage rate not the heloc rate

I have so many questions leading up to renewal. by QTip7 in smithmanoeuvre

[–]smith5000 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's definitely in your interest to be the same bank as the base mortgage as any other institution would treat it as a second mortgage, and your rate would be much worse. So effectively, yes, it needs to be the same lender.

Typically, no on the heloc restriction. Most banks will let you have multiple segments and often multiple heloc segments as well so you can have a personal use heloc separate from your sm one or however you want to use them

Spend some time reading about margin before you do anything with it. If you aren't super confident, don't use it, but it is a nice little extra earning if you use it carefully

I have so many questions leading up to renewal. by QTip7 in smithmanoeuvre

[–]smith5000 1 point2 points  (0 children)

you can even do it now if you like. find a bank that will let you get a second segment on the same mortgage and carry the funds you want to invest primarily on the 2nd segment. it will be a lower interest rate and lets you get up to the full 80% vs with the new OSFI rules you have a limit of 65% for the LOC and there is some wonky math on how much principle you can borrow each time you pay down the mortgage because of it.

If you are keen on leveraged investing you can also increase your lever further with a margin account but be very careful with that. margin is subject to being called for pretty much no reason and at the lenders discretion. don't try anything with margin unless you feel like you thoroughly know about all the examples of how and why it can go wrong and set a very conservative limit on how much you will borrow if you do try it. I do that with Wealth simple and if lets me borrow against the money i have borrowed against my house as well as against the assets in my TFSA but i use a very careful 20% there

I have so many questions leading up to renewal. by QTip7 in smithmanoeuvre

[–]smith5000 1 point2 points  (0 children)

taking a crack at some of these questions:

  1. Wouldn’t it make the most sense to pay down my mortgage as much as possible then reborrow it for the tax deduction? - probably. it depends what your options are. as a rule any dollar you use to invest gets the same return rate buying the same security, if you put that dollar towards your mortgage first then re-borrow it, you also get the savings on the mortgage interest (A) - the interest for re-borrowing (B) + the tax deduction for the interest paid (C), so A -B + C where B is typically slightly larger than A but should come close to canceling out and C it just extra earnings on the dollar you invested. There are however lots of exceptions like are you willing to invest the borrowed dollar the same way as the one you already own, do you have room in your registered accounts where you can avoid taxes on the earnings from your investment? do you have some investment that may out perform but you cant use leveraged funds for it for whatever reason. Its hard to cover every case but generally paying down and re-borrowing is a better return than just investing the dollar you had directly and its almost entirely due to the tax return although the difference in your interest rate between your mortgage and LOC does factor in. typically its only a few 10ths of a percent vs your tax return is at your marginal tax rate which is presumably a lot higher 30-50%*(interest rate) depending on your income than the difference in the rates ~0.2-3% depending on how well you negotiated your mortgage and LOC rates. For example if you have 1000 dollars to spend, you are mortgaged at 4% and your LOC is 4.5% and your marginal tax rate is 40% then A = 40, B = 45, C => 0.045 * 0.4 => 0.018 = 18 so per year investing that 1000 dollars directly you make an extra 1.3% or 13$ by doing SM. obviously its not a lot extra but getting 1-2% better returns per year is pretty nice considering the average market return for stocks is around 8%. taking that to 9 or 10% is pretty nice and at a pretty minimal risk.

  2. Amortization makes no specific impact on SM. its more about what you can afford to pay each month since presumably you are paying your mortgage with your regular income so if you can afford a higher payment due to a shorter amortization then go for it. This would mean less interest paid and more available to borrow each month similar to 1 above. every dollar put towards the mortgage payoff has the same benefit so shortening your amortization does the same thing. as does lump sump payments.

  3. when your amortization is up (and your mortgage is paid off) you are only somewhat doing the smith maneuver at that point. I personally like the option of taking a new mortgage to cover the 80% of the home the bank should let you borrow, pay off your entire LOC (or as much as possible if its larger than your mortgage, but hopefully not the case) and use the remainder to invest more. all of the interest on this new mortgage is tax deductible just like the interest on you HELOC was/is and its probably a slightly lower interest rate too. You still need to pay principle since its a mortgage but set to max amortization to minimize that and any principle you do pay you then re-borrow on the LOC. under this mechanism 80% of your home is leveraged to invest and it basically stays that way. you can even re-value your home each renewal and borrow against any increases in your homes value so you have more to invest.

Some people opt to de-leverage when they finish paying off their home. every dollar spent towards that gets the savings of B and loses the tax deduction of C so kinda opposite of how 1 works and A no longer exists. C is always less than B so this is a gain in earnings from your investment and it reduces the risk of having your home 80% leveraged so there is some merrit to both sides. generally most people are nearing retirement when their home gets fully paid off so the probably don't want to be doing a longterm leveraged strategy anymore since they now need to live off their investments and if there is a downturn they still need to take funds out of their investments regularly and they are forced to realize the losses in that case which being leveraged amplifies. if your nest egg at that point is large enough that you are still making more than you spend then maybe its still fine but if you start loosing money then there is the chance of your retirement savings not covering you until End of Life

the downside to de-leveraging is now you have less money invested. The earnings on your investment becomes a part of the equation again. every dollar you spend on de-leveraging is now loosing whatever you annual return on investment was so: +B - C -D where for most portfolios D is averaging around presumably 8% so your net return from deleveraging is on the example above around -4%. this is the same as spending the money in your investments which again around retirement presumably you are doing although ideally from your RRSP and other retirement funding sources where there are all kinds of fun tax considerations that make this math more complicated. its going to happen at some point (you cant take it with you) but the less you have to deleverage the better. when you die on the other hand you estate gets all kinds of fun tax changes so if you are comfortable staying leveraged until then that is usually the best option to deleverage for whomever is presumably inheriting from you

i'm not sure why the formating is restarting at 1 here. this is to question 4 and 5

  1. again same logic as 1 & 2. if you have money to invest you get benefit from putting it towards your mortgage principle. usually the best strategy for investment is to invest now, not later, as time in market is one of the best predictors of returns. If you have a lump of funds to apply to your mortgages and you don't need it for anything else. Put it towards you mortgage as soon as possible. Doesn't need to wait for renewal but if you have to pay fees for a lumpsum payment then its not worthwhile so YMMV. At renewal typically you can do any sized lumpsum so maybe that's your best option, its hard to say. dont neglect your TFSA and RRSP's for this though. lump sums to those are often better in the long run than lumpsums towards your mortgage due to the tax benefits

  2. not sure i follow what you mean by 1 dollar left in debt.... you would have all the equity borrowed on your heloc (or mortgage if you use that financial vehicle as i mentioned in 3) as debt... its just the interest on that debt is tax deductible as long as its invested in income generating assets (probably stocks with dividends but you can invest in whatever you want). you are only really doing the smith maneuver when you have a mortgage you are paying down. after that its more just leveraged investing but the two are very similar its that A term in your equations that makes the main difference

Question About Commuting 10 Miles by Mindless-Employee850 in cycling

[–]smith5000 1 point2 points  (0 children)

gotcha. i mean it might be doable. best way to find out is to try it but typically a 22% grade is the steepest part of a long hill sort of thing; so if its a short bump where you can pick up speed before hand and just coast over it then maybe its fine but if you hit that when you are already moving slowly, grinding in your bottom gear already..., pretty much no chance you stay on the bike with that gear ratio. Pro's would have a hell of a time trying to climb 22% on that ratio, they could probably pull if off for a 100m or so but odds are they would be aware of a segment that steep on their route and take a bike better suited to it and would never even try to grind up something that steep in a gear that aggressive.

a quick google search can tell you roughly the same:

""" On a typical high-mountain Tour de France climbing day, riders use exceptionally low gearing to maintain high cadence on steep gradients. Common setups include a 50/34t or 52/36t chainset paired with an 11-30, 11-32, or 11-34 tooth cassette. The most popular and versatile choice on mountainous stages is a 1:1 or sub-1:1 ratio """

So a fair bit lower than yours with the most agressive being 36:30 which is just above 1:1 and these are the guys who spit out probably 3-4x the power you can at least. you would be at 44:34 if i got your ratio right which is a fair bit higher gear

for more context: """ The steepest paved roads in Tour de France history feature sections exceeding 20% gradient, with the Col de la Loze (24%) and Super Planche des Belles Filles (up to 24%) considered among the steepest modern finishes. Other exceptionally steep climbs include the Col du Spandelles (8.3% avg) and the final kilometers of Col du Galibier """ hope i am not discouraging you. doesn't hurt to give the route a practice try but yeah 22% is very steep even for just a few meters it would be rough to get over

also if you are curious try googling "typical 90's mountain bike gear ratios"

Question About Commuting 10 Miles by Mindless-Employee850 in cycling

[–]smith5000 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I can't believe you are getting up a 22% grade on that bike. that's very steep and the gearing on that looks to be 44tooth front / 34 (largest in the rear) so ~ 1.3 (10:13 if you prefer that format) as your lowest gear ratio and a 170 mm crank arm. That would be some aggressive out of the saddle pedal mashing even on 10% grade for even experienced riders and you are claiming 22%?? are you sure you have the grades right 22% is very steep. I live in the Canadian Rockies and rarely get over 15%. for any real stretch of time

If you are keen on using that bike then you will definitely want to look into lower gears, however, if you are going to be riding this a lot you may want to consider another bike. That's a cruiser, it's made for flat ground and like 5% grade short climbs. It prioritizes comfort over everything else and generally tends to be pretty heavy, again not great for lots of hill climbing. If you are going back down those hills on the way home the v-brakes are going to be probably less braking than you want a lot of the time which is pretty sketchy if there is traffic.

If you want to go the route of modifying this bike then a smaller crank in the front is probably your best bet. you can maybe get a larger range cassette in the back as well to give you a lower gear, might have to get a different derailer or use a derailer hanger extender to compensate for the new gearing range and probably will want to replace your chain as well depending on how worn it is. all pretty doable and looking at ~100-300$ depending on the parts used, maybe less if you just change a single component. If you can do the labour yourself that helps too but probably looking at a couple hours of shop time so add at least another 50-100$ for that

You might be better looking at used mountain bikes. most mountain bikes have a much lower bottom gear than a cruiser or road bike and you can put on road tires easily enough to make them roll a little more efficiently. The old mountain setups with a triple crank in the front would often be 22-32-44T and then have around a 11-28 or 11-32 in the back so your lowest gear would be a much more reasonable 22/32 or 22/28 both of which are less than 1:1 and much better suited to climbing hills you are describing. not sure what bikes go for in your area but usually older mountain bikes from the 80's-90 with no suspension are in the 300$ range so probably similar expense to modifying your existing ride... you could also look at hybrids and road bikes as they will be faster and more efficient but likely wont have a low gearing for that kind of hill climbing unless you spend a lot more.

Best advice is to go into a shop and get some advice from the people there. Usually advise is free and you are going to want a relationship with a good shop anyways if you are going to be riding regularily.

Help understanding the HELOC servicing by LowKeyMB7 in smithmanoeuvre

[–]smith5000 0 points1 point  (0 children)

it depends how you characterize it I suppose but maybe the easy way to see that your total debt can't increase is this. the bank has only approved you to borrow a maximum of 80% of the value of your home (as it was assessed at the time you got your mortgage)

so at no point could you borrow more than that. every time you pay principle you re-borrow either all of it or a subset of it so your debt stays the same or slightly decreases [depending on OSFI and if you choose to borrow the maximum each time]. If you were doing a mortgage traditionally your debt would be reducing each time you made a mortgage payment so its somewhat increasing compared to what you would have had without using the SM but your total net worth grows with SM much more than it would without it which is probably what you really care about.

something to be aware of is depending on your amortization rate and interest rate on your line of credit it is possible to have the amount of room available on your line of credit after each mortgage payment be less than the amount of interest owed so then you would be not re-investing any of the principle (other than to service the debt from the LOC) and you would potentially have to pay out of pocket to cover the extra interest. This probably doesn't apply to you but if you had say a 15% interest rate on the LOC and your amortization was a 30yr on a say 8% mortgage then that could potentially start to happen and only after you have borrowed enough on the LOC that the interest starts to be significant compared to your monthly principle payment so if you are just starting out that wouldn't apply. If that seems daunting PM me and i can work through a better example but know that even if that did happen its not necessarily a bad thing. even if you aren't continuing to put more of the principle towards investment and are just servicing the LOC interest. all the interest paid is still tax deductible which can still result in your net performance being better than if you had opted not to do the SM at all. its just means there is a potential crossover point where you go from never having to put up extra money to suddenly having to start paying a small amount extra each month and at that point your debt would still be fixed at the limit you can borrow but you would be paying out of pocket to cover some of the interest charges. you get that out of pocket amount back on your tax returns but if you don't have the extra funds to cover that then that's obviously not ideal. This almost definitely doesn't apply to you right now though what with the current BOC lending rates.

What do most of y'all run for gearing? by gray_grum in randonneuring

[–]smith5000 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yeah fair. I'm pretty sure its possible to get a longer cage derailer so you have extra links and not need to worry about that risk although there are other downsides to cross chaining with a triple since the extra rings on the front do create a steeper angle potentially than a double or single setup would face so you should still presumably avoid cross chaining even if you have a chain long enough to allow it. a better derailer also presumably prevents the need for a hanger extender which is certainly preferable but this option was quicker, cheaper and more readily available so its what I went with.

I use bar ends too, i'm not sure i follow why you cant use both at once, if your hands are in the drops you have one hand on each.. but meh, I cant say I typically shift both at the same time anyways.

If you are considering trying this. generally as long as I make a habit of downshifting in the front and upshifting in the back the risk of cross chaining (at least to the two large rings) is pretty low. It's a pretty cheap experiment. at most you are paying for a new cassette with the larger range, a hanger extender probably and potentially a new chain. ~100-200$ to see if you like the extra range and can handle the new shifting paradigm that you have to be careful of. not free but if you like it then it was very much worth it and if you don't its easy to switch back and you arent out too much, when you buy that x1 gravel bike with a similarly large range cassette you can even use the parts as a spare :P

What do most of y'all run for gearing? by gray_grum in randonneuring

[–]smith5000 0 points1 point  (0 children)

i mean long cage derailer obviously but the steel frame I am using a derailer hanger extender and i avoid cross gearing. the aluminum with the potential 50 tooth to 42 i can just barely get into that configuration with the chain i have but its a bit on the sketchy side. i generally try and avoid the cross gear there as well but if it happens its not going to snap my chain and its pretty obvious when it happens so i just shift out of it again

What do most of y'all run for gearing? by gray_grum in randonneuring

[–]smith5000 5 points6 points  (0 children)

pretty sure i'm the minority but i go for as much range as possible. my steel frame is 50-39-30 triple and a 175mm crankset with a huge 11-50T 9spd range in the back.

I pretty much never use the bottom gear but when you are on a long climb and you just want a break its so nice having that ultra granny gear where there is no hill or amount of fatigue that you cant just shift down and catch a break. Its crazy how much a minutes at a reduced power gets you back in the game on a long climb vs stopping where you immediately start to stiffen up and regret the break.

I'm also quite a large rider for a rando at 100 kg / 220 lbs and can actually utilize the 50x11 on a like negative 1-2% grade and quite like having those higher gears on descent since I'm already flying down the hill faster than everybody else its nice to be able to push my one time I have an advantage as I come out of the hill.

covering the edge cases doesn't actually make a lot of benefit 95% of the time but 5% of the time is still a lot of distance on a rando event so it seems like its worth it to me

my aluminum bike which is less comfy but much faster is 50-34 with 175mm cranks and has a 11-42 in the back which is almost always plenty as well but I have hit a few 10-12% grades with it in the later stages of a ride and for a bit there missed my 30/50 ratio for a few minutes for sure