Originally Posted by
pressed001
I found a couple good articles about the triple.
The first is pro-triple (
link) which pretty much corroborates what you gents have already said. I find it funny how he ends the article. It seems as though the world is no longer okay...
The next article is against the triple (
link).
These are a couple good reads. I will let you all extrapolate your own conclusions on the matter.
For me, the triple makes sense. I do however understand that for the pro, they don't make sense. You have your course and you set up accordingly. I, however, am not a pro, just like 95% of people who purchase bicycles. And yeah, I could afford a new compact crank and a bunch of spare cassettes in which to swap out depending on what kind of riding I want to do on any given day. But why would I want to go through the trouble when there is one simple solution which requires one simple cassette.
Both articles are from a racer's point of view. I find that one of the funnier...both odd and amusing...aspects of bicycling. Most people aren't going to race bikes. Most people pay for their own equipment. Many racers don't pay for their equipment but component companies make and market their components towards the racing crowd instead of the larger majority of people who could benefit from a triple's range.
Originally Posted by
pressed001
I just love what ding-bat-dilly, coach Rob says about how it is better for you to push hard up those hills and even get off and walk the bike up when it gets too hard... Right... keep walking Rob.
That's only
one of his ding-bat ideas. He reminds me of my former Marine drill instructor wrestling/PE coach in junior high and seems to be cut from the same "get out there and go until you can't go anymore" school of training. He completely misses about 40 years of training research.
My favorite part of his post is
ure, you can always put a 12-27 on the triple drivetrain and end up with a very, very low gear (some have even gone so far as 30, 32 and 34t big cogs to give less than 1:1 ratios) but then you still have the problem of having large spaces in the cassette and 13 redundant gears. This may or may not be a solution for some, but is it worth the cost of admission for a couple points of decrease in gain ratio?
He completely misses the problem with giant hole in the compact double's shift pattern. Say, for example, that a rider is riding along in 50/21 gear with a gain ratio of 4.6 (at 90 rpm, that's about 17mph) and they need to downshift at the bottom of a climb. If they just dump off onto the inner ring, they drop from a 4.6 gain ratio to a 3.1 gain ratio. But they would have to slow to around 12 mph in order to continue at 90 rpm or, more likely, they would have to increase their rpms to 130 to 140 rpm to maintain the speed. That's not easily sustainable. And it would feel like your chain fell off.
The other alternative is to start upshifting. But to reach the same gain ratio, the rider would have to make 5 upshifts to the 34/14 gear. That's a lot of fiddling if you are in the middle of a race. It's a lot of (unnecessarily) fiddling if you aren't racing.
Now compare that to the triple that Coach Rob poo-poos. First he purposefully picked a fairly bad example but I'll work with it. From the start, the triple has a much higher range. The 52/11 would allow for 34mph at 90 rpm vs 30 mph of at the same rpm for the compact crank. I'd put that as a bonus for racing. Second, if you are riding long in the 52/21 gear (crosschaining a little) at the same speed and rpm as above and you need to downshift for a hill, moving from the outer ring to the inner ring would require a increase in rpm to maintain the speed but the increase is to 105 rpm which is fairly easy to maintain. A single upshift would place the gearing right back to the same rpm and speed.
Here's a better comparison of the same ratios that can be manipulated to see what effect rpm has.
Additionally, where Coach Rob sees holes and duplications, I see opportunity. A rider could stay in the middle range longer without having to shift up to the outer ring and then the transition isn't as abrupt. If a rider held to the middle range until they reached the 14 tooth cog, jumping to the outer ring is that large of a jump.
Finally, for the rest of us having a triple and "extremely low gears" isn't a sign of defeat nor an admission of weakness. It's an admission of reality. I'm not paid to ride a bike and I can't do it for 8 hours per day except on rare occasion...about every 2 years. And on those rare occasions when I do have a chance to do it for 8 hours per day for weeks at a time, I'm carrying all the stuff I need to sleep, eat, keep warm, and keep my bike functional. I'm not racing around the countryside on a 16 lb wonder bike with a car totting my gear nor someone preparing my meals. When the road turns upward, I need those low gears to haul all of that stuff to the top of the hill. And, honestly, he isn't even close to an "extremely low gear". I'm using a 20/36 and often wish I had something lower.