What gear are you running?

  First of all anything i write in this blog, is purely my opinion.It is all based on my experiences with bmx,working with Kenny and being way to obsessed with the sport.Im not saying its right or wrong, just my experience with it..
  So back to the question  weve all asked and heard at some point."What gear are you running?"
When some one asks me that, i think of roll out inches.In a nut shell, thats the distance your bike will travel with one rotation of the cranks.Dont over think that.Because first thing you need to do is figure if your kids a spinner.You often hear people say that their kid is pedaling as fast as they can and not going anywhere,so they move them up in gearing once or three times.
  Now to me, you need to train your kids to be spinners and not the other way around.Its all about foot speed and getting in as many quick pedals as you can while pumping or manualing every thing else.If your gears to big then its harder to get in as many pedals as you can.I always set Kennys bikes up with as close to 53.3 inches of rollout as i can.I figure this out by measuring how tall his back tire  is and using a calculator.I dont trust the charts 100%.So just put your bike on a flat sufrace and measure how tall the tire is.What i do is get one of those yard stick levels and stand the bike against the wall straight.
I place the level at the top of the tire and after its level i measure the distance from the floor to the level.Being a quarter inch off can throw off the whole thing off.
   Next you take the number of teeth of the chain ring and divide it by the number of teeth on the rear cog.Multiply that number by the tire height and you have your roll out.This is importans for changing bike setup and running multiple bikes.Plus its something to work off of when you are trying to figure out the best gearing.Hopefully this didnt confuse to many people.