Originally Posted by kingston

Yes, randonneurs have been using these setups for years for good reason, but there have been very few standard options until the recent gravel craze. It's just always puzzled me that I'm sort of an average recreational cyclists, not too fast or too slow, I ride my bike a few hundred miles a week in the summer, but I still don't have enough power to push a compact crank and a narrow cassette without cross-chaining most of the time and mashing up hills in a too-high low gear. I've just always thought that was odd. I've come to the conclusion that most people don't care about narrow spacing and have no problem using a wide-ratio cassette to get low gears.