Solving compact irritations

Hi

I ride with a standard compact set-up (i.e. 50-34 and 12-25).

I favour a compact because I'm not a "power-rider" and because my focus for competing is hilly and mountainous endurance events. Also because I like to ride with a highish cadence of about 100 rpm average and I feel therefore that a generally lower geared set up works better.

But, living in Holland, the vast bulk of my training is done on the flat (albeit with savage headwinds a lot of the time) meaning that my typical speed variation is usually in the 27-35kph range with average speeds usually 32ish for steady rides.


But compact gearing is really starting to irritate me - because in this speed range I'm very often shifting between big and small chainring and working the sprockets at the opposite end of the cassette (or within 2 sprockets of the bottom/top). And also because the jump in ratio seems really large - shifting up or down a gear and maintaining the same cadence often puts me in a higher or lower zone than where I really want to be.

So any experience or thoughts on this very welcome. I'm basically looking for the simplest remedy without completely negating some of the benefits of a compact.

i.e.
- Larger small chain-ring (36 or 38)?
- Different cassette?
- Go to a double (more expensive I think)

I ride SRAM.

Thanks!