Originally Posted by
msu2001la
My road riding is all flat, and I don't need a big range of gears for that. For me, an 11sp 2x drivetrain running a 50/34 with an 11-32 is overkill, and I will have a dozen gear combos on both the high and low ends that I'll never touch. When I had a 2x road bike I almost never used the small ring.
I can run the same narrow range 11-32 cassette with a 44T 1x setup and have gearing that works very well for what I need.
I had the same setup (50/34 & 11-32) when I first bought my first road bike, and also rode around almost exclusively in the 50T ring. Then, as I started venturing further and up some local hills, I started to really notice the gaps in the 11-32 cassette, and swapped to a 12-25 cassette, which forced my legs to get a tiny bit less wimpy. Now I have gone to a 12-28 cassette, which seems to be the sweet spot for my (lack of) power and local area.