No one in the current A group of bike club I ride with uses a triple. They seem to be mixed in the B group, and a triple is the predominate setup in the C group. I think that says more about the LBS mentality regarding new riders than anything else.

As far as compact cranks go, I used one off and on all last summer, mainly in the not so nice weather, since it was on my nasty weather bike.

The A group has some pretty serious riders in it, me being one of them, and no one even noticed that I was using a compact until I climbed one of the shorter steeper hills (Snake Hill Rd if you are familiar with LI) on the big ring. Even then all that was said then was "when did Mark become so strong?" and before I could answer someone said "he's cheating, he has a compact today." But no one really cared, what was important was that no one held anyone else up (we normally ride no drop).

Which comes back to what UMD stated above. In the real world performance is everything and equipment means very little. If you are in a group ride and you are holding your own no will care what you are riding. If they do, I wouldn't ride with them anyway.

BTW, we have a couple of women that ride in the A group, they ride standard doubles, and they are nothing to mess with. The newbie's that assume they are weak are spanked pretty quick.