Back when I went on my first long drive with the local car nuts, one of the most useful things to remember was that the person in front of me was basically driving the exact same car. Mild suspension tweaks between model years, some weight variances and whatnot, but 99% identical.
For those of you that aren't familiar with cycling, the number of gears on a bike is generally determined by the number of chainrings (up front) and the cassette in the back (nowadays 8-10). Mountain bikes almost always come with a triple chainring up front for a wider range of gears, while road bikes will have a double or triple. The smallest of the front chainrings is affectionately known as "The Granny Ring". As in, "only my grandma would need to shift to a gear that low to get over this hill".
Where am I going with this? On our group rides, 2 of the guys in our group have similar (identical?) bikes with a dual chainring up front. If they start a climb right in front of me, I can see the gear they are in. Machismo kicks in and I say, fine, I'm gonna put myself in the same gear and climb this hill. Sometimes I can do it. Sometimes I can't. More often than not, I end up getting my ass kicked on the really big hills.
I was starting to think that I was just a crappy climber when I stumbled across an interesting detail. The smallest gear on a dual chainring is usually smaller than the middle gear on a dual. In this case, I was trying to pedal with a 42T gear against a 39T gear. Assuming that we're both using the largest gear of the cassette (26T for me and 25T for them), I'm still in a higher gear!
Next time, I'm just going to drop down into the granny gear and go at my own pace. That way, when I can't keep up, I'll know that I can't keep up for sure!
