Rohloff Gearing

When I had my Rohloff bike built, I was not initially sure what gearing to go with. In the rear I chose the 16-tooth sprocket, as that seemed pretty standard. On the front I decided to start with a 42-tooth chainring. With my 170mm cranks and 26x1.9” wheels, that gave me a range of 18.9 to 99.2 gear inches, or a gain ratio of 1.4 to 7.4. On my derailleur bike, the setup that I’ve been running since 2018 gives me a range of 21.9 to 117.8 gear inches, or a gain ratio of 1.6 to 8.8. I had done plenty of touring on that and felt pretty good about it. So something similar, but a hair lower, seemed like a good place to start with the Rohloff build. Since then I’ve done a couple big tours with the Rohloff, and plenty of smaller escapades. I sometimes found myself getting down to the low gears more than I thought I ought to, which made me think that I probably should slap on a smaller chainring. Last month I finally got around to doing so. 36 and 38 tooth chainrings both seem to be common for…