So, I have put 4 decent rides in on my new 1x road set up. I noticed the last conversation on here about it was a while back. Tech has changed. So I figure its time to revisit the discussion.
I have two road bikes. One has a Shimano Ultegra DI2 11 speed with a 11-28 cassette. I have ran 52-36 and 53-39 out back. Never really had a problem climbing. The 39-28 was a push but never felt like that was the problem. I also have a Sram bike with a 50t up front. 10-36 out back. 12 speed. Interestingly the same gear essentially for my easiest compared to the 39-28. I find myself grinding a little more on the one by.
I have two major questions. 1st off, has anyone done any testing on if big jumps are actually bad? The shifts are noticeable but is that a bad thing? I get in our heads it might not be ideal. But race day performance, dose it actually effect us?
Second, the way things are going, with tech. Has 1x just became the new version of the OSPW for those of us who fall for marketing. Or do yall think that there might finally be a time when 1x is just better? (Crit Racing aside where no one uses a small ring)
I did a 1x road conversion, just to check it out. 50t with an 11-46 (I have hills here).
It worked, but barely.
Perhaps itād be different with more chainstay length, but overall the drivetrain was real unhappy outside of the middle 5-6 gears. Brand new freshly waxed chain and whatnot.
Maybe if you have drastically longer chainstays, itād be better but the whole drivetrain shifted so much nicer and was much quieter as a 2x, itās hard for me to believe it was working well.
Big jumps didnāt bother me in general, Iāve been on a 1x MTB setup long enough.
Nope, there is nothing bad with larger jumps. Both setups cover the same gear range. In fact, you could have gone with a 48-tooth chainring if you wanted the same top gear and a slightly easier climbing gear.
Letās look at the facts: SRAMās 10ā36 cassette has essentially the same jumps as an 11-speed Shimano 11ā32 cassette with an extra 36-tooth cog attached. Both have 4 tightly spaced cogs at the top and feature similar (ā identical) jumps. (I used to have a Shimano 11ā32 cassette on my trainer on the previous 2x road bike before going 1x.) For the easy gears, the gear jumps are smaller than on SRAMās 10ā33 road cassette.
Whether you prefer larger jumps on the climby end of a cassette is IMHO a matter of taste. I very much prefer them (I run a 10ā33 cassette on my 1x road bike now and I used to run a 10ā36 cassette when I lived in mountainous terrain), so I prefer SRAMās gearing options over Shimanos. But thatās just me. If you ride the bike the way it is now and you are not noticing anything you dislike, then you are overthinking things.
Larger cadence jumps are something you get used to. I come from the MTB side where you have larger jumps on average anyway.
Iād say if youāre not aiming at a world title in 1hour tt it probably doesnāt matter. With shorter chainstays you can feel the increased drag in the 52t cog but it wonāt stop you climbing that steep pitch. Like bike weight this is mostly in our heads and whether you want to live with 1x on the road or not comes down to personal preference.
Edit: Bad example. 1h TT is probably primetime for 1x. Especially if itās flat.
As with everything, it depends. If you can find a tight enough cassette with the top and bottom gears you need, then no. From personal exprience, on the odd occasion Iāve done hard sessions or fast group rides on my all road (when it had 11spd 38 x 11-42), it was not ideal but it was possible.
Have also dabbled in road racing (11spd 46x11-36) and that was fine.. but then the gearing was crap if I wanted to goto the Alps. Certainly wouldnāt go out of my way to remove a functioning 2x groupset on a best or training bike.
No, there are many upsides but maybe Iām just the sucker? I have 5 bikes and only 6 front chainrings..
But again, wouldnāt ditch a functioning 2x groupset for 1x.
I used to live in the Japanese mountains, and 1x12 would make that possible. At the time I ordered my bike, XPLR hadnāt been released yet, so I opted for a 10ā36 cassette coupled to a 42-tooth chainring. That worked quite well. Would I have liked another gear in some instances? Who wouldnāt With the release of SRAMās 1x13-speed groupset, I think this is a solved problem now. The range is as large as anything you can get on a 2x road setup and the large steps on the climby end would likely be a feature to me, not a bug. (I had even considered Rotorās 13-speed drivetrain, but was discouraged by someone in the bike industry.)
Unfortunately, I no longer live close to mountains and even my 10ā33 cassette offers too much range. It is exceedingly rare I use my 33-tooth cog When my chainring wears out, Iāll replace it with a larger 46-tooth one.
I have a 38-tooth chainring on my mountain bike (as I told you, itās FLAT here), and I can keep up with road bikes cruising for a while. due to more aero and tire drag, Iād be doing sweet spot instead of Z2, though.
Iām also running a 50t with an 11-46 (10 speed).
The jumps donāt bother me too much. But I agree that it gets finicky at the top and bottom and much prefers being in the middle. Which is where I spend most my time anyway.
GRX-812 derailleur into Tiagra shifters for my setup.
I would call that a very small amount of pros when you figure total race days. Is there any team riding 1x on climbing stages of any grand tour? My guess would be no. I recall the 3T team doing it because of sponsor desire and it was a failure.
In general, I just donāt understand why people want to ditch their front derailleur. Front derailleurs have never been a problem area for me.
1X doesnāt save any weight. Itās a wash when you add a heavier cassette and longer caged rear derailleur.
If one lives in a flat area, then no problem. Me, Iāve never lived in a pan flat area. I want my short chain stayed road bike to be a racer and not a cruiser. I want those short precise shifts.
If you donāt mind me asking, where abouts? Have been plotting a route through the Alps area, touring between Kyoto and Nikko. Might drop you a message it you know the area?
On topic, Iāll have 2 small panniers and hope that GRX 12spd 40x10-51 will be spot on
If memory serves, some teams even tried 1x12 XPLR setups. With 1x13, I donāt think there are many compromises, the 10ā46 cassette is essentially a 10ā36 12-speed cassette with the 36-tooth cog replaced by a 38 and a 46-tooth cog slapped on the back.
It was a failure, because SRAM hadnāt released a 12-speed drivetrain at that time. Nor was there a Classified hub or many cassette options. If you canāt fall back on 2x, thatās a dealbreaker. (I own a 3T Strada with a 1x12 drivetrain, so I know and love the bike.)
Nowadays Pros could run a 10ā46 13-speed cassette with no compromises as to the range and road gearing for at least the first 11 gears.
It also isnāt an issue in hilly and mountainous areas either. The range is there, the jumps between gears as small enough. Plus, you donāt have to shift in the front.
(I lived in Japan and could cycle from sea level to 1,700 m above sea level. The mountains were higher, but with a road bike you donāt get farther than the parking lot of the local ski resorts.)
Drop bar bikes are switching to 1x, slowly. It is starting in the gravel space and will migrate. I expect that as soon as SRAM has released cheaper 1x13-speed groupsets and Shimano got off its rear end and released its new 1x GRX groupset with better cassette options.
One state on the sponsorās super duper aero bike is simply a promotion. I never said that riding 1x is impossible or even a problem but it is not the preferred set of tools for a grand tour rider.
Weāll have to disagree on this. Even with Sram pushing 1x over the years, I see no across the board trend towards 1X for road racing. One stage here and there doesnāt count.
Omloop is a flatish race with short punchy cobbled climbs. I can understand Trek trying a 1x setup for reliability. But Trek is not showing up in the Alps or Pyrenees with 1x. Nobody is.
SRAM is agnostic when it comes to 1x vs. 2x, their solution is to offer both. I never thought that SRAM (or some other sponsor) was forcing the ridersā hands, my impression was that some teams and riders have been willing to experiment. (Thatās the way it was written up and I have never heard rumblings like after the failed 3T sponsorship where riders were very vocal after the team had imploded.) If it flatly wouldnāt work, then these would largely be one-off things. In my mind, seeing 1x or 1x + Classified hub-setups are becoming more common.
Define āpreferred setā: 1x is utilized and it seems to me that it is getting more and more common.
Letās bet a dollar that in 10 years, the majority of road race bikes will be on 1x. What I see has all the signs of the adoption of disc brakes on drop bar bikes: people who grew up on the old stuff complaining, saying āthe old stuff is easier to maintainā and āthe old stuff works great, we donāt need that new stuff.ā
My prediction is that 1x will take over in offroad dropbar bikes and TT bikes first, i. e. the next generation of TT frames might not be compatible with a front derailleur. Once, 1x13 becomes popular (by releasing more affordable options) , it will make inroads into the regular road bike market. Shimano will bring out one last 2x groupset where the front shifting is impeccable, but nobody cares. That is, history will repeat itself for the third time.
My partner didnāt want to deal with the confusion of when was a good or bad time to switch the front. She would almost never use it because it stressed her out too much. She is NEVER EVER going to pedal to make herself go faster than say 25mph going down a hill. For her she basically had 0 use for a big ring, but staying in the small ring caused to much issue with rubbing/cross chaining etc. One shifter to worry about, silence, she loves it.
I on the other hand realized that after about 2 years I had literally not shifted out of the big ring, not once, on my tri bike. At the time we lived in an area that was rolling hills you were shifting the back every 30 seconds but never had to actually shift in the front. About the same time I picked up my crockett, also a 1x and that was it just make the entire house 1x and parts swappable between everything.
In the near 10 years since doing this I have goofed in one and only one race and wished I had a 2x or just had chosen a better front ring. I swap between my 130bcd power meter and 110 (from the crockett) when needed to get something smaller. This was when my daughter was 5 months old so the lack of training was probably just as much as fault as my gear choice.
I personally see no need for a front der on any of our bikes.
Gearing wise, you want an adequate gear range for the range of gradients, and close enough spacing in the higher gears for rides where aerodynamic drag dominates and power required goes as the cube of speed. 1x, 2x, etc. offer various tradeoffs between weight, aerodynamics, complexity, and reliability that are chosen among based on the situation and personal preference. There is no right or wrong.
I think we are already seeing the 2x die out on gravel. Look at the new Allied. No place for a front derailer and none of the videoās I watched even mentioned it.
With the release of SRAMās 1x13-speed groupset, I think this is a solved problem now. The range is as large as anything you can get on a 2x road setup and the large steps on the climby end would likely be a feature to me, not a bug. (I had even considered Rotorās 13-speed drivetrain, but was discouraged by someone in the bike industry.)
When my chainring wears out, Iāll replace it with a larger 46-tooth one.
