Originally Posted by
Fast4 50
I was doing leg speed on the rollers this morning and was thinking about cadence goals/standards/handicaps by age and came up with this formula:
225 - racing age = cadence for your age
Thoughts? Competing formulas or maybe you've read something somewhere. This is for fun, nothing scientific, just something to think about in between efforts on the rollers.
I don't think leg speed numbers mean a lot outside of maybe Goldsprint races. I think being able to hit high rpm on rollers is more of a parlor trick. They are important to me when training to relax.
I'll trade these numbers for faster times on the track any day:
I'm 64 this year, was off the bike and a couch potato for over 35 years, and took up the sport again 14 months ago.
With 172.5 cranks. I work out on a old wind trainer and can do 230 for 5 seconds in a very low gear. A few weeks ago I recorded 194 @ a peak of 485 watts, and averaged 169 for 30 seconds at 355 watts. Those low-load numbers (230 for 5 seconds) aren't much different than they were when I was a kid. It only took a couple of weeks of drills to do that.
I think relaxation drills help me a lot, and that is why I do the drills. Again, those numbers are meaningless until I can translate them into speed on the track.
Relaxation work is something I picked up years ago as a college track and field sprinter. Here is an article on it:
The Skill of Relaxation
And if you find this interesting, this is an outstanding book on the subject:
Relax and Win
Rick