Ditto, mid compact with 11-28 is a great for climbin, flats, and descents.

This is the right answer. 53/39's used to be the standard for a long time, but if you are doing any considerable climbing there is a reason 50/34 is the new standard. Keep your existing cassette if it isn't worn out.

Thanks for explaining. His reply was confusing to me.
Now that I remembered to go look at a gear calculator it makes perfect sense to me.

I've asked people who have ridden professionally on the best crank ratio the said the 52/36 was the perfect ratio for the street. It's what I run with an 11-28 cassette. I've got up every hill I've come upon, though slowly on some. 100-105 cadence is high, great you can keep it up, but slowing it down to the 90s may net better results. Everyone is different though, so do what's most comfortable for you.

A 60 cadence for climbing a 9% grade isn't bad. Overall being new to cycling your regular cadence of 100-105 is a bit high. Several studies exists on cadence and generally 85-95 is good for most people with normal riding. Your high cadence riding along with low climbing cadence makes me think you need more leg strength.

I wouldn't bother your current gearing for a while. Use hills as a way to build strength. Stand occassionally and pick up the speed/cadence. Also use a more difficult gear on the flats and work harder in spurts.

This chart is a good explanation for why bikes are geared wrong for most people. Guys at the top of this chart are putting out three times the power of the guys at the bottom. Most people are putting out power that looks like the bottom half of the table and running gears designed for the guys at the top. Explains why I like my 46/36/24 crank better than my 53/39.

My cross crankset at 46/36 with an 11/28 in back is great. 46 is easy enough to start from a stop and 36 can be run up to a reasonable cruising speed (it runs out with wind/downhill assistance and some effort).

I see triples making a well-deserved comeback once everyone realizes compact doubles and wide range cassettes are a huge tradeoff for a few extra grams and a few extra seconds of front derailleur tuning. Having a 42T middle ring for most terrain plus a big ring in the 50-53T range AND a 24-30T bailout ring for the steep stuff is still the ideal crankset in my opinion.

I went from a 12-25 to a 11-28 cassette (not going to bother with DA long cage). This alone makes a huge difference.
Sometime soon, I will change from a 53/39 to a 52/36 or 50/34, depending on what my crank and stuff supports.

-edit-I will never see myself cranking fast on a 53 with the small cogs. I will try my damnedest, but I doubt it.

Exactly, I believe Merlin who is an active member here is a CAT3 and rides a compact. The rest of us don't need taller gearing. Some in fact need wider gearing if living in the mountains...a triple is a pretty good thing....granny to get up and larger ring to descend.

Thanks to Colorado for his excellent post. Great perspective.

Let's not say that no one needs a 53-39 or that it's too tall for anyone slower than a Cat3 racer. Personally I can get by with just a single 44 gear in front, but I like having a 53 better.

Standard road double 53-39 is fine for average riders, and people do complain about drawbacks of compact gearing. Mainly the extra shifting between rings they find themselves doing.

Last reason is why I ride a 50/38 on my main bike...both rings more usable than 53/39 and maintaining close gearing. 50/34 and lack of gear redundancy is the price for having more climbing gears...a learnable combo which takes more discipline to ride because easier to get caught between two rings with big gap but with practice manageable.

While I agree that triples are great for most recreational riders, I don't see them making a comeback because they're not cool and they're a little bit harder to use. Most people are not making a realistic assessment of their abilities, looking at the terrain they will be riding, and plugging different gearing combinations into gear calculators to see what will work best for them. They walk into a shop and buy the coolest looking bike in their budget. When I encounter people out riding I'll occasionally ask about what gearing they are running and how they decided what to go with. 7 times out of 10 they have no idea. Even the few who know what gears they have usually say it's what came with the bike. I would say 1 out of ten specifically selected their chainrings and cassette for their abilities and intended use. That estimate may even be a little high because I talk to a lot of randonneurs who tend to be very knowledgeable about that sort of thing.


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.

...and insisting on a double. A 50/39/30 triple maintains that close gearing and gets you better climbing gears than a compact.

Perhaps Shimano will come out with a DI2 triple (with the sequential shifting feature) for those people. DI2 = automatic cool bike which should be more than enough to offset any lack of coolness of a triple.

Interesting idea. I doubt the pros would use it because they already know how to shift and they don't need the granny gear anyway. If the pros don't use it, then the average MAMIL won't think it's cool.

Most pros aren't using compacts and pie-plate sized (32-36T big cogs) cassettes either. I think it has a chance, but the big 'if' is will Shimano decide to bring back high-end triples. Perhaps some pros would run one in the big mountains if it was DI2. I can imagine a 54/42/32 triple with an 11-23 cassette being quite the mountain tamer for a pro.

I don't have any inside information, but I would guess that Shimano stopped making high end triples because people weren't buying them. Anyone sensible enough to get a triple knows that the weight savings of a fancy crank is completely inconsequential to them so they settle for a lower spec shimano or sugino or something like that. People buy high-end compact cranks because they look pretty much like the big-boy cranks to the untrained eye. A triple looks like a completely different thing.

Pros don't need that wide a range. On the really steep climbs where they run compacts there isn't much benefit to a 53 or 54 cog. Climbers aren't sprinting nor are they pedaling much on a steep descent.

Maybe I'm just thrown off by all the BFers who need a 53T big ring on the flats

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.

I've been considering swapping out my 50 ring for a 46 on my compact double.

Those are my thoughts exactly. I posted earlier that the poster just needs to build up strength before deciding his current gearing won't work. You added a lot more good info for him.

Where do you find climbs that average 9%?

I love climbs as well (currently riding a mid-compact with 11-28), but I have never seen an extended climb at averages that steep. Even the steep streets of SF, which are anomalies, are about 10%, but are short (less than half mile). https://www.strava.com/segments/624852

+1 in theory but I'm not sure if there are any 11 speed 11/12-30T cassettes out there. The short cage RD can handle it. I made the leap without a problem (10 speed).