Originally Posted by
livedarklions
Here's what I was responding to--"Most people (as in pretty much everyone else) would find your cadence painful". If all you're saying the real issue is most people can't apply torque like I do, I said that already. Whether it's because of pain or lack of leg strength really doesn't matter. I've made it very clear that I'm aware that I'm an outlier.
We're having a half empty. half full argument. You said, in essence, that it's my lack of ability to spin that's making me mash to go fast, and I said that from my perspective, it's other people's lack of ability to mash as hard as I do that makes them spin to go fast.
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There are plenty of guys out there who can mash, but they simply produce more power at a higher cadence, so that's what they ride. Track cyclists would be the obvious example. All I meant about your inability to spin is that you said that for you it results in less power, so therefore your torque must drop off rapidly with cadence. If your joints are fine and you enjoy it then it's all good. It's like running an IC engine in a very high gear at a very low engine speed. The torque puts a lot of stress on the rods and bearings. Which reminds me of another thing with gearing - acceleration. A lower gear allows faster acceleration until you spin it out. Torque at the rear hub is proportionally higher in a lower gear for a given crank torque. Again as it is with cars. But you need a decent range of cadence to take advantage of it.