Originally Posted by
rsbob
We all ride at our own pace as evidenced by a poll I held on the Road Bike forum. For decades I maintained a high 70s and low 80s pace because I felt like my legs were engaged and working. Regardless of how tired I felt I maintained that cadence and have up until about 6 months ago. That’s when I did my first Zwift workout series, Build Me Up. It had me spinning at what I considered ludicrous rates, up to 110 RPM. It also had plenty of 60 RPM high torque moments as well. What I learned ( better late than never) is that a high cadence makes high effort sessions (say 250 Watts for me) much easier when I spin like a mad man - about 100+ RPM. OK, so that worked on the trainer but what about real life IRL/OD?
Today I went out for a ‘short’ ride and decided to use high cadences because my legs were still a bit tired from yesterdays trainer session. I kept it on the flats and rolling hills about 90 and felt like i was not putting out any energy - and I really wasn’t since I was putting along at 16-17 MPH. On the 11 and 12% climbs (all four of the bloody things) I tried to keep it around 100 but since I was riding my vintage 12 speed, 26 lb Bianchi - it was more like 50-60. But when back on the flats, back to 90 which again felt effortless.
My 20 mile short ride turned into an almost 40 miler with 2000’ of climbing which I thought I would regret, but returned feeling really quite good, but not more tired than I started. This proved to me, that high cadence, even though can be a bit slower (I had no PRs doing this) was really quite helpful when tired and can comfortably extend a ride.
In the future if I get tired pushing lower gears, go to the higher ones and spin away. The morale to the story, an old dog can learn new tricks.
So have all of you known this high cadence ‘secret’ forever and have been hiding it or was the ‘spin to win’ the secret all along?
Most modern training plans include both high and low cadence work and encourage you to push your "default" cadence slightly out of your comfort zone. My natural cadence was around 75-80 rpm, but with training, I've gradually pushed up closer to 90 rpm, especially when riding tempo. At VO2 max power I'm pushing 100+ rpm for a few minutes. But I also train the lower end of my cadence range (down to around 50 rpm) for very steep climbing. On extended Alpine climbs I often find myself bogged down below 70 rpm, even with a 1:1 low gear (compact 2x), which always makes me wonder about road gearing for the average rider. But that's another topic all by itself!
Remember that power = pedal force/torque x cadence. So increasing cadence is just as effective in producing power as pushing harder on your pedals. But intuitively it can feel like you are making less power when spinning vs pushing a bigger gear. Riding with a power meter helps you to understand this relationship better. I often find myself producing more power while spinning, even though it "feels" like less power than grinding out a higher gear. For example dropping from large to small chainring on a climb often boosts my power as I spin up, even though it "feels" like the complete opposite at the time as the muscular load drops off.
Spinning puts more load on your cardio system, but it's faster to recover. Muscular fatigue requires a much longer recovery. So having the ability to spin faster is a useful advantage in endurance events. But there's always a balance to find and that varies from rider to rider. But the pros are all relatively high cadence riders from what I've seen.