Doubts about road bikes gearing
Hi!
I'm a mountain biker just about to buy a road bike. I'm looking for a cheap bike for occasional use, so I'm leaning towards Decathlon's Triban 3A.
However, I've been looking at road bikes gearing and I feel that all of them have way too high gears. In the area were I live, there are also lots of steep road climbs, some of them reach a 30% slope, and I'm trying to understand how can anyone climb this with the high gearing that road bikes have. The Triban 3A I'm looking for, for example, has a lowest gear of 30/25, and the Specialized Allez doesn't fare much better.
Currently I do 5000km/year on a mountain bike and around 2000 in my commute with a folding bike. Based on my climbs in group rides I feel that I'm a good climber, and I'm used to long, steep and technical climbs where I'm forced to use my MTB granny gear (22/32) to maintain a reasonable cadence. On most races I've done this year I usually finished among the first 15%, so I think I'm in good shape.
Do road bikes really roll that much better to compensate such a high gearing? even my Dahon Mu P27 has lower gears (and curiously, also higher)!! I feel that with this gearing I may as well call the bike a knee breaker!
How are you supposed to climb using such high gearing? I feel it's either standing and mashing or being extremely strong to avoid slowing down and maintain a reasonable cadence.
Is it possible to fit smaller chainrings in a road bike?
Thanks