I'll chime in with SK's post - I swapped my front chainrings from 52-42-30 to 48-38-24, and it made a huge difference. Then after the Mt. D ride with the TE gals, where I still felt I was grinding up the steep parts, I thought about getting a mountain rear casette as well. So now I have an 11-34 Sram cassette on the rear instead of the 12-25 cassette the bike came with, and it's great. For one thing, the 11 gives me a higher gear than I had before, which is nice going down hills, and the super-granny is really a great spin gear. In fact, on my last ride with hills, I was 2 or 3 gears above the super-granny much of the time on the hills, but it was nice to know those gears were there!

The only thing I have noticed is that sometimes, because there is a greater tooth dfference between rear cogs now, I sometimes feel like one gear is "too easy" and the next is "too hard". I know as I get stronger this will change, so I think it's ok for now. The other thing is I do need to attend just a little more when I shft into the lower rear gears because of the distance between cogs. But the new rear derailleur is better than my old one, so overall the shifting feels easier and smoother.

Finally, I am keeping all the old chainrings and other bits and pieces, so if I ever get to the point where I feel like I can drop some of those granny gears (that will be a happy day!), it's not a big deal to swap them back.