ofajen

Formenti has two papers on tissue saturation, that one from 2019 and an earlier one in 2015. He shows that your muscles tend to have less oxygen saturation at say 90 rpm versus 40 or 50 rpm. One takeaway from these papers is don’t pedal fast at lower work rates, because you are just making things harder for your body to maintain oxygenation.

I had seen that paper referenced in some articles about cadence, but I don’t have the full paper, and the abstract says nothing about maximum external power. Do you have a link to the full paper?

Here’s one that actually is measuring the power-cadence function, basically in a time trial context.

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/159149503.pdf

See figure 4 for the modeled and measured Pmax as a function of cadence. This test is measuring maximum external power at a specified cadence.

I also like that other paper you mention, the one with the link. They compare riding a simulated three hour road race at two constant cadences, 80 and 100 rpm, it with variable load and then testing the subjects’ peak power after the ordeal.

The riders used 5-6% more energy doing the three hour ride at 100 vs 80. After the 80 rpm session they produced nearly 10% more peak power than after the 100 rpm session. But peak power was measured at their chosen cadence, which tended to be around 90 rpm.

Different protocols and different results. Mostly, I’m not riding at peak power and if at some point I’m riding at a cadence that affords 5-10% less peak power, I can still do my rides quite effectively.

Otto