Mike's Bike Blog

I spent yesterday afternoon down at Austin Bikes checking out the Orbea Orca, they have 1 in my size with Dura Ace components. I road 2 other Orbea's the Onix models. The Onix in and of itself was a great ride, but my goal was to ride Ultegra and SRAM Rival compact cranks. Both of these bikes were in compact crank configurations. This was my first time trying out compact cranks.

My Fuji has triple cranks, I typically don't use the small ring very often unless I'm going on a mega hill attack. My knees like the lower gearing that the third ring offers. In my testing I went up 7th and 9th street over by Austin Bikes several times testing all 3 groups. 7th is the steepest around the shop that I was able to ride, it averaged 6% with the max at 10%. The compacts offered the low end that I was accustomed to with my current triple. The double of the dura ace still got me up the hill, but I definitely had to work harder, not sure how my knees would hold up with repeated climbing with the double.

The problem with the compact I seem to be giving up a lot of the medium gearing. It seems that with the compact I'd be in the large ring for most riding and only using the small ring for steep hills. I might be giving up too much with the compact.

So the question is, if I went with the double and then had multiple cassettes that I swapped out for hills, maybe a 12-28 would I have enough range for the hills around Austin? On the flip side, should I go with the compact and get a different cassette for flatter rides?

I'm open to suggestions and insight that will give me the best options.