Originally Posted by
bigfred
Ego prohibits my adoption of your proposed solution, no matter whether it makes logical sense or not. For the sake of two hills out of all the hills in the area, I will not adopt a triple! The thing that keeps me from spending the bit of coin for a 34/50 isn't any loss of range. As has been pointed out many times 50-11 is actually a taller gear than 53-12. It's two things: One, the fact that while riding with Mrs. Fred I would find myself in the same auckward situation as her, with regard to constantly cross chaining (one way or the other) to maintain her comfortable cruising pace. Two, the increased gap between ratios, which would be completely unacceptable on my Saturday Morning Old Farts Ride. Although, at least on that ride, I would be spending the majority of my time in the big ring and several of the other old farts seem to do o.k. with a 34/50. But, on the flats, I really appreciate close ratios and the ability to fine tune cadence. Do I want to sacrifice that for "two" hills? Neither of which lasts more than 90 seconds?
I think you need to tell your "ego" who's boss.
Nobody has ever been big enough to tease me about riding a triple, and I've ridden/raced with some very talented people. Your choice of gearing should be just like choosing the right tool out of the tool chest. Would you choose the wrong tool just because someone might perceive you as a sissy? That doesn't make much sense.
I don't understand why people want to point out that a 50-11 is bigger than a 53-12? Sure it is but it's not bigger than a 53-11. It's best to compare apples to apples. The advantage of running a triple is that you
can run a tighter cassette. I personally am not fond of big jumps (on my compact) so I typically run an 11-25 cassette and for hilly rides a 11-27. I spend most of my time in the triple on the middle chainring so cross chaining isn't really an issue.
Just as an aside, I took my compact on a hilly century a few years back and was with the fast (Pro/cat1/cat2) guys for the first 65 miles of hills then we hit a 5 mile flat section and I got spit off the back of the group because I couldn't spin fast enough. That really sucked. Especially answering the "what happened to you" questions afterward... I still use the compact in the right circumstances but I'd rather have people make fun of my triple as I blow their doors off than get spit out the back because I don't have the right gears.