Compact or standard crank?

What’s the best all round crankset if you’re only to have one. Defiantly the triple. You have the 30(32T) for climbing, the 53 for drafting and flats and the 42T for everything in between. So. Where does that leave the compact and the semi compact 39-53. Lets have a look.

The 53 and 50 are still good for flats, but the 34? Mostly climbing or recreational rides. You can of course put on an 11-? cassette, but using that 11 would be cross-chaining, and most cassettes are pretty much the same except for the three upper cogs, meaning whatever cassette you put on it only changes the lighter gears of the 34 chainring. Also. Going down in chainring makes the gears come closer together.

For a compact you’ll be in need of a compact (custom) cassette with a much more linear increase of teeth between the cogs to get a full use of it. Then we might be able to talk about benefits of the compact crank design, but even then I would say that a triple would be better or at least make use of a far smaller ‘big ring’ to get a bigger overlap and avoid forced front derailing around 28-32 km/h.

So what’s my conclusion. Compact’s probably here to stay ‘cause the bike industry need something to hype and a few people might benefit of it, but if you want something that really works you should take a look at your cadence and speed intervals and pick your chainrings from there. You’d probably get away with just changing the chainrings of your existing 130BCD crank arms.