Low cadence - signal dropping (Kickr, Wahoo sensor on shoe)

Training
1

I love doing G.O.A.T. It’s my jam. But when I do the 50rpm intervals, my Kickr often drops cadence to zero after a bit (am using wahoo cadence sensor on shoe). I used to think the issue was that the Kickr wasn’t sensitive enough to reliably measure low cadence. Then it occurred to me that it might instead be that my (very) imperfect pedal stroke. If I focus on full circles after the trainer cadence drops to zero I can usually get it to register again but if I then get tired or lazy, it drops again. I do try to do drills from time to time and I’m learning to use rollers someone gave me, but in the meantime, am I indeed the problem or by some miracle is it technical in nature? Thoughts?

2

This is a known problem, sensor is more sensitive when mounted on a crank. I moved mine from my shoe to my left crank and it measures down to 30rpm now.

7 Likes
3

Thanks for the tip…Power Station up today, so I’ll move the sensor and give it a whirl! Think I still need to work on my pedal stroke, though :joy:

1 Like
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ok, reporting back: mounting the cadence sensor on the crank works perfectly for low cadence work…BUT just did Cadences builds and holds and the cadence now drops just prior to 150rpm. I know I was going faster than that…can we not have it all?? how to get both high and low cadence readings?

5

You’re using the Wahoo RPM cadence sensor? I was running into both the low and high RPM limits of mine, and Wahoo support told me two things: crank mount is better than shoe mount for both low and high cadence, and the upper limit for the RPM sensor “tops out around 180 RPM”.

I found that with the sensor crank-mounted, 180 RPM seemed pretty accurate as the limit of where it would function reliably - I did get it to read as high as 191 or 192 a couple times during cadence builds, but more often it would drop as soon as I reached 180. If yours won’t read higher than 150 RPM, I’d suggest contacting Wahoo support, because that’s significantly lower than what they told me is the expected limit.

On the low end, I wasn’t told an official limit, but my sensor was dropping out around 50 RPM when shoe-mounted, and around 30 when crank-mounted.

1 Like
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Thanks. I’ll give them a call. Wish I could say that the high cadence dropped b/c I topped out over 180pm, but my PR is around 165, so I doubt it! Hope to get this sorted…Cheers!