These are mountain bikes and both of us are Mountain bikers when out together. His bike jiust does not have low enough gearing for offroad on our hills so has to use his granny. On my bike with the wider cassette and the lower chainrings- he was able to use the middle ring to better effect and I doubt he got into granny. He has set his bike up for speed on the road- but with gearing that is not usable on the higher range.

Now on the road- I have a compact and a triple. Severity of our road hills is about the same with 10 to 15% but asphalt has less drag than rough chalk. 12/27 on the compact 50/34- and 12/25 on the triple 50/39/30. The compact is low enough at 34/27 but I do struggle with 39/25. I have to use granny on the triple.



Just to show you our grade of hills- I mainly do XC on the MTB and these are the sort of hills we have only 6 miles from home. None of the hills are high- 850ft max above sea level- but most climbs start from sea level. We can arrange rides from 10 miles to 100 miles completely off road within our area Only problem is that Road rides have the same hills- and just as many.