Originally Posted by
kingston
This is another reason triples won't be making a big comeback. People don't take the time to figure out where their gears are and how to use their transmission effectively. They just go out and start riding, and it's a lot easier to just click up and down the cassette than to navigate through the chainrings.
It's easier to shift the cassette, and also faster shifts with less gap to the gear you shifted to. With the 53 ring I am in the middle of the cassette range for most of my road riding, so I go up or down two or three gears without needing to front shifts. I find that to be convenient.
I'd only want a compact for a better climbing gear ratio at the bottom end, or a triple if I
really needed that. I have the impression from OP that he's climbing pretty well. 60 RPM up his 9% grade is already not shabby, and I expect him to get stronger since he's just recently started. It seems to me that talk about changing to a compact double is premature, and a triple is an overly drastic change, when just swapping a cassette may be all he ever really needs. And maybe not even that.