I figured other American women had done this ride, probably just not at this time of year. Besides, Stelvio, the highest paved mountain pass in the Eastern Alps, didn’t faze me. Home in Colorado, we race up 14,000-plus foot Mt. Evans, the highest paved road in North America. At 9,000 feet, Stelvio wouldn’t be a problem.

I was more interested in what the bike owner had just stepped into the back room to retrieve: my sexy Italian race bike.

I paced in front of the register. Fab smiled like a parent playing Santa. He’d arranged for a demo bike from his favorite local shop. The owner, giddy at the prospect of outfitting a young American racer, had refused all “rental” payment offers. I’d thought of nothing else the entire flight. What would my Italian bike be like?

“Bellissimo!” Fab murmured as the owner wheeled her out. Beautiful she was – a sleek carbon fiber Pinarello. Pink, black, and white. I ran my hand reverently down her hand-painted top tube. She must cost double my racing bike back home. I gawked at her componentry – top-of-the-line Campy. She was my dream come true. I bent down to check out her shiny crankset; it was a standard.

My heart fell. She might be more bike than I could handle.

Why was I so rattled by the crankset? The combination of cassette and crankset makes up the range of available gears. Gears become a critical matter when you’re riding extreme terrain … say, Stelvio Pass. For steep hills, you need “granny gears,” the term for easier-to-push gears. I was nervous at this bike’s lack of lighter gears. If you can’t turn the pedals over, you can’t stay upright on your bike, let alone make it up the mountain.

Back home, I run a compact crankset with my 11-23 cassette. Compact cranksets are one of the more useful component innovations in the past decade as they provide smaller, easier-to-push front gears. They provide 50-34 front rings while standards utilize 53-39. The compact’s lighter gearing comes in handy for Colorado’s steep terrain.

Compacts provide more than just granny gears. When used with an 11-23 cassette, they actually provide more "useful" gears than standard cranksets. They provide a wider range of the small- and mid-range gears used in climbing and tempo riding, while only giving up the largest gears (i.e., the gears male pro’s use for sprinting, or as I like to call them, gears I have no business pushing).

Had I a choice for Stelvio, I would have run a compact. But alas, my pink lady bore a standard crankset, a buxom 53-39. I stared at her with a mixture of idolatry and anxiety. I was no longer sure how this ride was going to go.

The next morning, we pedaled to the base of Stelvio, marked by a sign reading “48.”

“What’s that for?” I asked Fab.

He smiled, with a hint of pity. “It means this is the first of 48 switchbacks.”

What else could I do? I started pedaling.

All around me, snow-covered Alps presided over endless green fields and lapis ponds. But the stunning scenery could not negate the three hours of lower-back-breaking climbing that lay before me. I didn’t allow myself to think of how glorious the climb could have been with a compact crankset. Instead, I thought “Push, pull, push, pull,” trying to find a rhythm with pedals I could barely turn.

Fab promised me beer and baklava at a ski restaurant at the top. When we eventually got there, we clanked glasses. “To the only American woman to ride Stelvio Pass in October without a compact crankset!” he said, winking at me.

I laughed, despite my screaming quadriceps. The pink lady was hot, but she was a heck of a lot of work. I clearly prefer a more demure race bike, something a bit more petite and with smaller cranks.