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I know not everyone does a long ride in their week. But if you do, that’s the one to try and spin through I think.
Bonus lfgss rep if you do it fixed on a light gear (it does help).
miro_o-
I know not everyone does a long ride in their week. But if you do, that’s the one to try and spin through I think.
I did a long ride today, and pushed my cadence the whole way. It was good - I found it surprisingly easy to adapt my shifting habits by looking at the cadence readout and aiming for 80 and 90. I felt pretty fresh deep into the ride, more so than I would have if I had ground my way up the hills as per usual.
I wondered whether I would actually benefit from an easier gear (than 36/28), because going up two long and steep climbs on my route I found myself in the granny gear and my cadence dropping below where I wanted it.
You can see from the graph that my cadence really slumped during the steep mid-section on Mam Nick
It turns out I can climb out of the saddle at 80rpm, it's not necessarily fatiguing, just different.
Bonus lfgss rep if you do it fixed on a light gear (it does help).
I would love to have a fixed gear bike again, but I don't know whether I could do much with it it in Yorkshire/Peaks. Maybe with a flip-flop hub and two brakes.
Thick_Hollins
Has anyone worked to increase their cadence and benefited from it?
I'm following one of the plans on Strava, and although I take everything on there with a pinch of salt, I noticed that it recommends doing climbing intervals at 85-90rpm and 'power intervals' (max efforts uphill or on the flat) at 95+ rpm. I did my intervals yesterday on an 8% climb, and pedalled as fast as I could while sustaining a 'good' power, but only managed to average at most 73rpm over any interval.
I think I'm naturally a slow cadence climber, and over 80rpm is probably unrealistic for me, but now I'm wondering if cadence drills would be helpful to increase it a bit.