if you have a 34/50 and a 12-25 cassette and need to gear down..

you could just it a 11-32, 11-34 or even 11-36 cassette..

34/36 is pretty low so unless you are a doing mega heavy touring (i.e. front, rear panniers, rack pack, bar bags etc etc) then it will be fine.

When I bought a road bike again after about 15 years without a road bike I found that I always felt I was in the wrong gear with a standard double. Having swapped to a compact after about a year of trying to get on with the double I felt the bike immediately felt ‘right’. Now that I’m a lot fitter I might give a standard double a go again but not sure there’s any point as the gearing feels perfect.

well cheers for the advice gents, but I caved in and have just fitted the 105 stuff I have just bought from Merlin.

Hopefully it should be OK.

Thanks again, as pointed out earlier I can always use a 28 rear sprocket and stick with my compact. The touring will be only for a couple of days anyway, so it wont be loaded up too much.

P1040006 by eastham_david, on Flickr

cheers for all your pointers folks.

Happy riding

Chucky

Should be fine. As a general point, the only way to get a wide gear range, and small jumps between the gears, is with a triple. I have a triple on my audax/ winter bike and a compact on my summer road bike. Only problem with the compact is the jump between the front rings is too big.

The only touring I’ve done on my Roadrat so far was using an Alfine and a 39t front and 22t rear. According to Sheldon Brown’s gearing calculator that was some 10% lower than I’d have had using the 34t inner of a compact and an 11:32 rear cassette. Even that was still good for 20+mph pedaling and I don’t recall at any point wanting more than that (I was quite happy to just freewheel down hills). I only used the lowest gear a couple of times for short steep hills and don’t think I’d have struggled if I hadn’t had quite such a low gear available.

I think I might have struggled a bit towards the end of the day if 34:25 had been my lowest gear though.

It might be worth bearing in mind that I’m slooow though – my average speed for the tour was only 12mph!