I ride a lot of hills and could not be happier with my Campy Triple. Present gearing is 11-25. Was able to finish the Death Ride but am thinking of changing to more gears for the ride this year. The 11 with a 53 large chain ring allows peddling to around 33 MPH before spinning. Due to a broken frame a friend recently went from a compact double to a triple and much prefers the triple set up.
Spinning out a 53/11 at 33mph sounds really low to me. I have a 50/12 and I don't spin it out until about 40mph on the descents.
Back to the triple vs. double dilema, I started out with a triple on my previous bike and it was okay. the shifting was actually pretty good as long as I used the trim settings that Shimano (Ultegra) has on their triple Derailleurs for fine-tuning. I don't know if Campy has that or not. As I got stronger I found that I almost never used my small ring. It sort of became a game to see if I could get up my regular hills in the middle chain ring. When I upgraded I just went with a compact double and never looked back. The consequence was putting a 12-27 (still Shimano at the time) cassette on the back. I was able to get up some pretty steep stuff (20+%) with the 34-27 combination, but I was pretty slow doing it.
When I switched to Campy on my Dragonfly I moved to a 13-29 for some extra climbing gears. Part of me thinks that I could get away with a standard Campy double (53-39) and a 13-29 in the back and still suffer up the steep stuff, but I worry about knee pain later in life.
I wonder how much I really need a compact double and if I got rid of it if I'd just be able to adapt to a standard double out of necessity. Would my legs just make due with what they had?
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