jamesdak, I experimented with my distance roadie carrying a max. 20 lb. load last year. It has a ~32-100 GI range that worked well. It uses a 30-42-52T road triple with a 14-25T 9S cassette. A good combo for trimming headwinds. I mention this because initially the small MTB crank set looked odd to me on what is basically a roadie (Oddly it looked fine to me once I had the adaption of my rear rack figured out and installed, go figure.). Just a third option to what I've already posted that I've found to work, at least for light loads.

Brad