I have a couple of bikes with setups you would probably like to try out.

One I built up with 34/50 on the front and 12-26 on the back. 34/26 takes me up the steepest hills around here without having to stand up.
The other has 38/46 cyclocross crank and 11-23 in the back. I wanted the road sprockets in the back but needed to compensate for it up front if I wanted to go up some hills.

I think the "standard" gearing on road bikes is stupid if you aren't a serious racer. I'm not Mark, Thor, Fabian, or Tom. I can't spin out a 53/11 on anything but a steep hill and I'll bet they won't be able to when they are 52 either.


Here's how I figured out how to gear my bikes:

Go out to the places you ride and test your current bike on the extreme parts (steepest climbs and descents). For the climbs, put it in your small ring and big cog and start climbing. Shift up until you are in the smallest cog in which you can comfortably climb (perhaps imagining you are tired, too) and record those numbers. Do the same thing with your big ring and small cog on the descent. Once you have the numbers for what you want your lowest gear and highest gear to be, go to Sheldon's gear calculator:

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/gears/

The important thing here is to always use the same wheel size, crank length, and units. What you are interested in the the relative change in gearing.

Enter the two combinations as if you had a 4-speed bike. Maybe they are 50-12 and 30-22 and hit [calculate]. Write down the numbers from the chart. Go back to the page and start playing with chain ring sizes and cassettes and look for combinations that hit your high and low numbers. If you just guess you risk wasting valuable gears on combinations you never use.

Bob