53/11 is pretty tall. I had a Ciocc that had a compact 50/34 up front with an 11 in the back. I used the 50/11 more often than I thought I would. That works out to about 119 gear inches.

I just got back from a nice after-work ride. Just 14 miles up a local canyon and back. Basically, it's 5-1/2 miles of shallow climbing followed by the turnaround and 5-1/2 miles of shallow descending. I took the Palo Alto this time, and it has a 53/13 as its tallest gear. Coming down the canyon and heading for home, I was spinning in the 53/13 and hovering at about 30mph. I don't have a chart handy and I don't have a cadence monitor, but I'm going to guess I was probably making 70-75 rpm's, anyway. It was nice and comfortable, and I had some headroom to stand and sprint on the short uphill bumps.

Maybe I'm just a big mass of slow-twich mashing muscles, but I seem to use pretty much all my gears - albeit some a lot more than others.