What's the Right Cadence on the Bike?

I was recently asked about bike cadence.  How do you train and race while keeping it in mind?  Here are my thoughts from an email to a friend.  You just might find it useful - 

First off, it's important to remember that people are highly individual with cadence, so you'll need to test and find out on yourself.  Second, higher cadence takes muscle strain off your legs and puts it on your cardio system instead.

Where we live, it's best to do higher cadence with lighter torque when going uphill, but lower cadence with a little more torque on the flats and downhills.  And then that variability ends up being nice because you work the muscles differently the entire ride.  If you go down to the Brazos River bottom on HWY 159 where it's super flat, you'll notice that staying in the same gear with the same cadence for long periods gets very tiresome.  In that situation, it's best to actually purposefully alter your cadence every few minutes.  Let's say do 97 for a while, then 90 for a while, 94 for a while....  You'll come off the bike with fresher legs that way. (This guy has a naturally high cadence already)

 

Jordan Rapp would tell you to bike with whatever cadence during the race feels most natural and easiest.  That's going to give you the best run.  And I would add to that, that I've done higher cadence in races on purpose and burned through my fuel too fast and got off the bike already worn out. That leaves me with this rule -  The time to practice higher cadence is during intervals in training, and then that work will reflect a naturally higher cadence on race day without you having to work at it and wearing yourself out too soon for a good run.

 

So, I'd do bike rides with 10 to 20 minutes of higher than normal cadence, do rides where I purposefully mix cadence on super flat sections to get used to doing that, and I'd also do long segments of "letting go" and practicing letting myself do self-selected cadence to practice being able to do that on race day.  All of this will both get your natural cadence higher AND train you to execute the race without thinking about it.  Because if you think about it, you'll try too hard to have that higher cadence and then you'll blow up.

Comments

[Paul Burns]

Good point about altering cadence on a long flat.

If a hill climb is pretty steep you may have to resort to a low cadence like 70 #nogearsleft. If you drop below 65 consider the following. In an old cycling book from the 80's they call climbing out of the saddle at a slow cadence "honking". They suggest keeping the cadence at 50 to 55 so that you are simulating stair climbing and have time to put your entire body weight on each push. I messed around with this on a couple of rides and I think they are correct. Pedaling at a higher cadence than 55 while out of the saddle uses up more energy.

On another note, when I am on a group ride I tend to have a faster cadence on flats and rollers, upper 90's or even >100, without even thinking about it. When ever I do think about it I usually shift to a harder gear when my cadence goes above 93. I shift to an easier gear when it drops below 82.

Shift sooner to a harder gear when going downhill.