Originally Posted by
FrenchFit
I like standing on hills, but I do spin up to conserve energy. When I spin up, I'm probably doing 10mph or better and I'm not winded and my knees are happy. I use a compact and wide range cassette. Triples make sense on paper, but they make my road bike feel clunky. But, if I was on hills all the time I would just go with a triple and live with it.
If you're spinning up an 8% grade at 10 mph or better that's a pretty fast pace. A 170# rider would need to maintain about 330 watts to go 10 mph on an 8% grade.