twocicle

That all said, in my single road racing "A" crowd, a 50/34 x 11-23 cassette is not enough of a high end, nor is the 50/34 a good combination for cruising along at 21-23mph while training. The problem with that gear range is that at 21-23mph I end up cross-chaining either the 34 or 50 for much of my rides, then in races the 50x11 is not high enough to bridge/close gaps on fast downhills. Using a compact crankset for my single racing, a 52x11 top gear is needed at a minimum so I use a 52/36 on that bike.

On the tandem, we do not race and if we are riding with others the concept is to ride together, so a gear higher than 48x11 (equiv to 52x12) is not all that necessary for our purposes. If we were racing the tandem, I'd probably install a 53 or 54 big ring and a 36 or 39 small ring.

As it currently stands with the 48/30 "super-compact" chainring setup, we are riding > 95% of the time in the big ring and middle of my custom "ShimSRAMo" 11-28 cassette. This means we are doing very little FD shifting and multi-rear cog switching due to the 18T gap in the front rings. I'm really liking this setup.