Originally Posted by Drew Eckhardt

I said that full-sized doubles with a 23-26 big cog work great for guys making 3.5W/kg living in the Colorado Rockies (been there, done that) and the rest of us living in sufficiently flat places (been there, done that too). There's a lot of wiggle room there.

I'd like to be able to buy new equipment which suits my tastes and that was looking less likely as lemmings leapt on the compact band wagon. Keeping the triple crank dream alive on-line reduces the chances of that happening. Campagnolo has seen the market demand and is now shipping 3x11 combinations, and Shimano hasn't joined SRAM's move to a compact only lineup. OTOH 13 starting cogs are going away and SRAM is double-only with no 18 tooth cogs.

I'll stop posting the same rant when other people stop asking the same gearing questions over and over, people stop suggesting everyone needs an 11 cog, "compact" isn't the most common response to "my gears aren't low enough," or I get tired of it.

The same gearing questions have been recurring for decades on the internet, people aren't going to stop the push for 11 tooth starting cogs until 10 tooth ones come from the big manufacturers, and I've grown a lot more patient with age.