I've always liked lower gearing . When younger, I didn't have time to ride enough to be bike fit and I'm not the athlete most road bikes are geared for.

I've always put a mountain bike crank set on my wife's road bike (22/32/44) with an 11-32 mountain bike cassette. You need to use a mountain bike rear dérailleur. For my cyclocross based road bike I use a TA 22/36/46 crank set (the rings are changeable over a wide range) with a 12-27 road cassette with a mountain bike rear dérailleur. By adding a few links of chain (with SRAM gold links) I can easily switch the cassette out to an 11-32 for the N Georgia mountains. That combination exceeds the rear dérailleur capacity, but it doesn't matter as the 22 ring is not used with the smaller cogs anyhow.

Al