Sometimes it seems like the "big three" drive train makers don't care about folks my age (I'm 55), despite the fact that many of are still riding 150+ miles a week and have more disposable income than ever. Last summer I was building up a custom road frame and had a terrible time working out suitable gearing with readily-available parts. I live in Colorado, and a typical Saturday ride is 60-80 miles with 5000+ feet of climbing with extended sections of 8-12% grade. It's true that I could do that in a 39:26 once upon a time, but now I need something a lot closer to 1:1 ratios in order to avoid destroying my knees.
It turned out that 6703 Ultegra was that last premium-quality road triple available. Shimano never made a triple crank in 6800, let alone Dura Ace. SRAM isn't making any road triples at all. Even the 6703 crankset wasn't ideal: I wanted something smaller than 30 teeth on the inside, but it apparently can't be done due to the indexed shifting and front derailleur design.
I suppose I could have dropped down to some entry-level group, but who puts Sora on a custom-built road frame? Eventually, I realized that I could order the "A" version of the Ultegra mid-cage rear derailleur, which allows a 30-tooth large cog. That gave me my desired 1:1 gear, but at the cost of larger central cog jumps than I'd really prefer.
Conventional wisdom (available free at your LBS) says, "just get a compact crankset". Well, I've done that on my cross-utility bike and it sucks. I can testify that RollCNY was absolutely right when he wrote:
Originally Posted by
RollCNY
A compact crank with an 11-32 cassette is silly, and is potentially the least pleasant combination you could find. If you need that range, then get a triple, and a tight cassette, and have pleasant shifting.
Unfortunately, it's not economical to scrap an entire Apex drivetrain in order to use a triple crank. So last week I ordered a Sugino OX601D double crank with 44/30 rings. I think this will be a good setup, but it took weeks of research to find this option. Why can't SRAM or Shimano make something like that? With so many bike makers introducing purpose-built "gravel" bikes, I think there'd be ample demand.
I'm not sure Mr. RollCNY agrees with me, though:
I blame the whole "your cadence should never drop below 80" nonsense for all of these silly gear worries. When someone tells a new rider that their cadence should be 90 or higher, or that 100 is a good baseline cadence, you are saying that a starting rider should have a higher cadence than almost every professional rider before Lance. Did we all forget the Ullrich / Armstrong cadence battles? Everyone wants to spin every hill, every time, and people on this forum perpetually say that if you can't spin a hill, get easier gearing. I find it silly, and untrue, and I ride by an awful lot of people spinning merrily away at 85 on hills that they could have walked with equal speed. Some times, we all need to just pedal harder.
All I can say to this is that I can no longer pedal below 60 rpm without significant knee pain, but I still like to climb really big hills. Come to Colorado for one of the big summer tours and we'll show you what low gears are for.