Originally Posted by
DougG
I also doubt it's "short cage." Your bike has the latest trend in gearing that has an 11-32 tooth spread on the cassette as opposed to the 12-27 that came on my last road bike with a similar crank. With a compact double crank, this gives you a lower climbing gear (34-32), which is better than the racier combo with a 34-27 low gear and is actually not that far from my oldest bike with its triple crank and a 30-27 lowest ratio.
The disadvantage of an 11-32 cassette IMO is that you lose having as many close-spaced cogs, but that 11th gear helps with that (on my 12-27 cassette, the first 6 gears are only a tooth apart).
Apparently, I was wrong about being a long cage RD. As it turns out, Shimano's new 11-speed derailleurs are either small or medium cage. As they're currently designed, "medium" 105s handle up to a 32T freewheel whereas the "short" 105s go to 28.
