Bike: Cadence & Speed, zones

Comments

• John Stark

  February 9, 2011 6:56PM

   Dottie:

  This has been discussed to death elsewhere.  General industry guidance is 90ish.  The EN guidance is don't sweat the cadence issue.  Whatever is comfortable and gets the WORK done then that is your cadence.  I am in the high 90's when I do my WORK.

  And if you look at footage from Kona, Chris Lieto has a high cadence and Maca has a low cadence.  Which is right?

  Keep up the good work.

  John

   

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• Michael Byerts

  February 9, 2011 7:36PM

  Don't worry about speed on the trainer. My experience has been that absolute speed on the trainer doesn't track speed outside. How fast you go on the trainer depends on how much resistance the trainer is giving you. That in turn depends on what type of trainer you are using, how far you have it cranked down, what tire pressure you are running, and a host of other variables. It would be possible, but difficult, to hold them all constant every time you use the trainer. I don't think it's worth worrying about.

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• Michael Byerts

  February 9, 2011 7:40PM

  I'll defer to others on the cadence question, but here's my answer: whatever cadence allows you to run best off the bike. As John indicated, some elites spin a very high cadence on the bike while others spin a lower cadence. Experiment with both in training and see which feels better on the brick run.

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• MattAaronson

  February 9, 2011 8:41PM

  As John said, there are a lot of views on this topic on line. It seems people dial into a particular cadence that is specific to the individual. Some are higher than others. General consensus tends to triangulate on an “optimal cadence” somewhere in the 85-95 range, and it certainly seems less common to see cadence numbers below 80-85. And certainly 67 seems quite low.
  
  All that said, power is power, so if you are hitting z4 power the “work” is the same regardless of cadence. Although certainly the character of your “workout” is a lot different.
  
  Regarding “speed” on the trainer, it is a function of the resistance unit on the trainer and completely irrelevant in my experience. For example, I just changed from a CycleOps Fluid2 to a Kurt Kinetic Road Machine and my z4 “speed” at 211 watts went from 23.5 to 21.5 mph. If I am inconsistent with the tire pressure or the force with which the resistance unit contacts the tire it changes my “speed” at a given power output. So personally I do not use that metric, and have configured my screen on the Garmin to not bother showing it.

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• atasic

  February 10, 2011 8:09AM

   Dottie:

  As indicated above, allow your body to self select the cadence. Once you know what you are most comfortable with, you can mix it up from time to time and go outside your comfort level. It can be beneficial developing ability to function in a wide window of cadences, otherwise don't sweat it.

  Speed on the trainer has no comparison to the outside. I would use it to monitor the trend on the trainer only, if at all. 

  All solid advice above, enjoy it.

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• mgraffeo

  February 10, 2011 12:14PM

  All good advice above. The only thing I'll add is that 67 is a pretty darned low cadence. In general, if I see myself slipping below 80 or so, I'll shift, just because I want to avoid muscling through the pedal stroke too much.
  
  Interestingly, research has shown that the most 'efficient' cadence thermodynamically is somewhere in the low 60s. However, the higher the cadence, the less muscular force is required to put out a given power. So, most people find a balance somewhere between 80-90. The 'gospel' in triathlon is that you'll 'trash your legs' if you bike at too low a cadence, making it hard to run off of that effort. But, there's a lot of individual factors there.
  
  I've often wondered if you couldn't train up to bike at a cadence in the 60's, and train yourself to run off of an effort like that...

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