Anyone else have a sudden change in something about your riding style or technique?
Since I’ve been out on the road this spring, I’ve noticed my comfortable outdoor cadence now settles at around 100rpm. I’ve always been a 90rpm-er, and usually chug along at 90rpm on my indoor trainer, but for some reason now the legs are happier spinning along at 100.
Maybe my cardio system is stronger than my legs this spring? Weird.
If anything, I’ve gone the other way. Several years ago, I was spinning 85-90+ and moving to 100 but the past couple years I’m stuck in the 80 or less range.
I should say, when I’m in a fast group, or trying to hang on to one, I definitely spin higher than when I’m solo where I tend to grind it out more.
I think I’m similar to what Sir @Glen.Coutts said.
When I’m in good shape for my workouts I tend to spin faster in or near the 90’s. But when I’m not I spend a lot of time in the 70’s and low 80’s.
And then it also matters whether I am alone or not. When I’m doing a virtual race or a group ride I tend to find I’m in the mid-90’s. But when I’m by myself I’m usually in the mid-80’s. And when I’m tired or on a bad day I have to work hard to not grind it out in the 60’s and 70’s.
On my own, I’ve been tending to ride with more power and lower cadence the last couple of years. Maybe it comes from spending more tome riding gravel and doing tt’s.
I continue to find that my cadence picks up quite a bit when I’m doing ProRides. That has never changed.
I’m finding some of the same as @CPT_A but not quite the same increase. Mine is probably more like just under 90 as the average but it used to be probably 5 less. And it certainly varies with the type of ride, but I’m more comfortable and effective if I stay 90 or better, unless it’s steep climbing.
In SYSTM, I stay higher than I do on outdoor rides, but some of that is because I switched to 165mm crank on the KICKR BIKE for more than 6 months now, while my DOMANE is 172.5mm, so an increase is partly logical there.
But I’ve carried that new comfort at higher cadence outdoors as well, paying more attention to holding the cadence higher because I realize I get lazy and let myself start grinding. And I’ve seen that pay off with better average speed and endurance, though that’s a pretty subjective assessment.
And now I expect to see an even more significant increase outdoors because I just installed a new 155mm Rotor crankarm setup with an XCADEY spider PM on my DOMANE. Only had time to put it through some torque efforts on the carport and a short steep slope to the back yard as dark came on, so I’ll have to wait to put it to work on a long ride tomorrow, but it certainly felt really good in the short test run.
Wow!
I definitely put the 155mm Rotor crankarms to the test today. Started my ride late, 1:30pm, so the heat was going to be tough. We’ve had NO heat to speak of yet here in Virginia, USA, so I’m far from acclimated. Temp reached 87F degrees.
I started out to do my Seahorse Century 100mile course, with over 8000’ elevation gain. I found myself pushing harder than I should have, but liking it. My HR was too high many times, power looked about where it should to me, so I felt the XCADEY XPower-S Gen2 spider meter was reasonably on target. My course had a LOT of uphill, with some steep climbs that weren’t terribly long as things go around here, but long enough to hurt and always with long approaches that took a toll.
I felt good, and I could tell it took more force applied to the pedals than before, so I was using lower gears more of the time, but it felt fine…
That lasted until almost my first PITSTOP at 45 miles, at which point, I realized I was COOKED when I started out again with fresh icewater with electrolytes and Hammer Perpetuem in my bottles again.
At the last mountain peak before that, 33 miles into the ride, I was averaging 142bpm, 88rpm, and 157W, all strong numbers for me. I was at 14.7mph at the 45mile stop, having climbed about 4000’ at that point.
Once I started out again after the stop, I knew I wasn’t going to last for the full distance. I had 1100’ to gain in the next 5 miles, with over 800’ in 1.75miles. I couldn’t really avoid that climb, so I stayed with the route and did it, but I had to just steadily crawl up in low gear, trying not to blow up completely. My stomach was a bit upset because I had overdone the effort early on and the heat was really hitting me at that point.
The descent was longer than the climb and on a very curvy switchback descent that had gravel tossed across the pavement on every corner, so there was not much relaxing.
After I got back to the valley floor, I had a long straightish road with barely any drop, less than 1%, so it was steady pedaling. I stayed easy on the pedals because as Phil and Paul always said, “There was no more coal in the boiler room.”
I messaged my wife, who was compassionate and willing to come pick me up to save me from the remaining 40-ish miles, with another substantial climb (that I could bail on) but lots of smaller ones too, so I was really thankful for the option.
By the time she reached me, I was about to hit 75 miles, and did just under 5800’ of elevation.
Overall, I’m very happy to have the shorter cranks in place. It’s too early to tell much because today was such an outlier ride in several ways, and I know I need to get several rides on them to adjust to the changes in gear choice timing, as well as body position on the bike. I definitely could tell I was staying comfortable at a lower aero position than I have been able to before. That was a very positive thing.
The loss of some torque was detectible, but didn’t feel discouraging to me, even though I already ride out of spec with cassette choices to achieve lower gears. (50/34 compact crank and 11-40 XT cassette, on an Ultegra 11 speed mechanical setup.)
Overall, I’m pleased with the first day out on the shorter crankset, and look forward to how it changes things for me over time. As to higher cadence, I ended the day with an 84rpm average, not as high as it looked like it would be after the first 35 miles, but after bonking some later, it really pulled my average down. The 84 is probably close to my previous norm, though with all the climbing, it probably would have been a couple points lower in the past.
Here’s my Seahorse Century course screenshot (which I didn’t complete today, but have in the past.)
