That is what I do and works fine with a bit of practice. If it is a steep change in incline, you can just hit it without changing gears and soft pedal until cadence drops a bit but stil fast enough to change into small ring. Then as you keep soft pedaling change into small ring and adjust with the rear if needed.

The other option speeds things up a little, if right before the climb you shift up in the rear, that means you don’t have to wait that long before the cadence is low enough to switch into the small ring.

Someone up thread mentioned 10-speed Campy. Hitting both thumb buttons simultaneously dumps the chain front and back. Absolutely awesome in rolling hills.

for steep variable grade hills I find staying in the smallest chainring of the triple gives me great range and fine resolution. I can stay in it most of the ride.

I can’t tell you the number of rides I was thankful I got the triple over the compact crank. Especially since triple 105/ultegra/dura ace setups are nonexistent these days.

I lost the “what will the other riders think of me” insecurities over the granny gear.

I anticipate which cog I will need, shift to it and then shift to the smaller ring. 50/34 and 11/28 gearing.

I've been using a 16T difference at the crank since since 2008. I have no issues with the compensating shifts. If the shift is timed right, where your cadence has dropped from the climb, you can shift to the little ring with no compensating shifts. It all depends on how quickly the grade is increasing. I rarely need a 3 sprocket shift. If the change in grade is slow, and you shift well ahead of need, shifting 2 sprockets smaller immediately before the shift to the little ring can work, but on a fast increase, you can get bogged down and have a poor chain ring shift.

I'm not impressed at all with electronic sequential or compensating shift modes because it contributes to chain drops and can make unwanted chain ring shifts. I use SRAM force axs 12 speed and never use the compensating or sequential modes. I limit my shifts to 2 sprockets if I hold the shift lever, there's no over compensating. I also don't use a sram crank because I want the extra range of a 16T difference.

This.

The outmoded idea that you run down the big ring and drop onto the small ring is outmoded because it doesn't work.

There is considerable overlap so that you can do 2/3 of your riding in either ring.

If you see a big hill a ways ahead, you have a couple choices----if you are approaching it at high speed (small end of the cassette) then shift up a couple in back and down in front --- that should keep the gear ratio pretty high. Then climb in the small ring ...

Or, if you are making a gradually inclined approach .... same thing. Shift onto the small ring early. I find two or three up in back and one down in front is usually a small step down in overall ratio. So if you have 11 cogs, when you hit 8, you can shift to 11 and drop to the small ring and pretty much be on target.

Or ... climb the thing in the big ring.

Basically it all comes down to knowing your transmission and your abilities. if you think of your rings as sequential, you are psychotic :D but seriously, you are not thinking in line with reality. You need to ride enough in different combos to know when certain combos are appropriate to your preferred power output and cadence. You need to plan ahead. And if you ride a route frequently, you can have your whole shift pattern planned out in advance.

When I used to ride MTB, back when dinosaurs ruled the earth, one had to be Very careful about shifting and trimming. I learned that on a certain trail, at certain points I could shift on the flat from the lower third of the big ring to teh middle of the middle ring and have the lower rend of the middle ring for a few climbs (shifting under load didn't work back then, and shifting the front under load often cause the whole bike to implode.)

Yo probably don't need to learn the whole of both rings, but at least learn the lower end of the cassette on the big ring and the upper end on the small. Have some idea of where you want to be when you have the option to shift either the front or the back, before you hit the hill. And learn to quickly dump or lift a couple gears in back while or almost simultaneously shifting the front.

WARNING: if you are going to shift simultaneously front and rear, be sure to ease off pedaling or your chain will explode .... well, mine did. :(

I am picturing all the individual links of chain scattered along about a thousand feet of the trail...:eek:

Nobody seemed to mention that a 1x drivetrain wouldn't have this issue. Though I don't recall having seen a 1x road bike yet, Gravel and mtb yes, but road no. Certainly they must exist?

It's hard to believe these ticking time bombs can be sold to the general public.

Shifting to the small ring before you actually need it. Takes a lot of practice and in my case, it took a lot of repeated rides to actually get to know the topography of my riding area by heart and be able to anticipate when and where exactly I need to use my small chainring.

You could also get DI2 and leave it on synchro mode, but you would still have that longer shifting delay due to both derailleurs moving the chain at the right place :thumb:.

Have only seen it on time trial bikes. But you're right, someone is doing it somewhere.

Upgrade to Di2 or Campagnolo Ultrashift levers which allow transitioning to the next gear on the small ring in one motion.

With traditional Campagnolo levers you just push both your thumbs at the same time, dropping up to five cogs in the process. The original pointy hood levers can go from largest to smallest in one motion, although 5 are enough for a compact crank with tight cassette like 50-34x13-14-15-16-17-18-19-21-23.

You could also shift to the small ring and smaller cog soft pedaling as the road turns uphill, but that wouldn't provide an excuse to buy shiny new bike parts.

39x13 and 34x11 are comfortable 24 MPH cruising gears allowing short sprints over 30 MPH.

Every mechanical Campagnolo brake/shift lever made since 1992 can do that with the exception of the much maligned Escape mechanism (2005-2008) and Powershift (2009-present) used on the least expensive levers.

8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

The Specialized Allez came in a 1x a few seasons ago, but they may have dropped it.

A somewhat related (but not totally related) thought is about power loss during a gear shift and how to minimize it. We've all had the experience of climbing a hill in a competitive or semi-competitive situation and losing ground because we needed to shift gears, but I'm thinking about it b/c of Zwift, where all eyes are on the power numbers and you can lose a lot of power during even a simple gear shift (i.e., just changing rear cog).

Am I wrong to think that this is what it is and is not a product of technique? In a gear change, there always has to be a moment when power isn't going to the wheel. (and it doesn't matter if you are measuring power at the pedal or the crank, the resistance has gone down for that time) I'm sure that lost power X time is minimized by DI2, but I'm not about to put my DI2 bike on the trainer (I don't care that much). But with with mid-range (105 5600) group stuff, not much to be done, huh?

If I'm in a zwift race, I may not change gears at all, but if I do, I try to do it only when I'm in the draft, where the quirks of the game minimize the effect.

Cant see how this is a problem in real life as the worst case shift times are under a second so you just have to pedal a little harder for a couple extra seconds to make up for any losses during a shift. For rear only shifts you can shift under load so there shouldn't normally be any power loss.

You shift the RD under load?

I'd be curious to know what's his definition of ''load''. My R8070 does not like ''load shifting'' at all regardless of the stress that's on the chain.

There is definitely a momentary power loss. there's a short interval when the chain is not exerting torque on either cog. As to whether it's a problem, that depends on values, I suppose. In a race or in an uphill competition, that "pedal a little harder" is already committed.

And no, it's not a big problem. I lose all the zwift races I enter anyway.

Also, am I thinking about this right? Somebody correct me. Let's say that a shift means 0.5 seconds of no effective power. And that I'm otherwise riding at 250 watts. To compensate over the following 10 seconds, I'd need to go up to 262.5 watts. That's not a big deal, but it's an extra effort that I'd rather be using to my benefit than to be catching up to where I already was....

I need to put this in very post while I'm on this subject - I am not saying this is a big deal. I'm just musing about a little power loss that I see all the time when I'm flailing away in my basement.

Sure, why not?

Sprinters with a lot more power than me shift under full load 1600+W so I figure I'm safe shifting at any load I can generate.

Those sprinters only need their bike to work for another couple of seconds, before it is taken apart by the team mechanics. Maybe you are right the bike can handle it, just that how pro riders treat their equipment is not necessarily the best argument.