Question of the Week: Which Cadence Should I Ride?
By bethany
What cadence should I ride? This is a common question from new cyclists faced with a host of new data, when before they may have just been focused on mph and cadence as their only two metrics for measuring their cycling performance.
Cadence alone won’t get you anywhere. If you’ve been to a gym spin class lately, you’ve seen what focusing on cadence alone looks like, folks bouncing all over the saddle at extremely high rpms with little to no resistance. They may be burning calories but they’re not improving their real ride performance. Power you produce and ultimately the speed at which you ride is determined by two things in combination- the force you’re putting on the pedals times the speed at which the pedals are turning.
Is higher cadence always better? A typical triathlon mantra is ‘spin to win’ but is high cadence really the best solution for everyone? Long-time advocates of high cadence cycling will point to the classic example of Lance vs. Jan Ulrich, Lance rode away from Jan with his higher cadence compared to Jan’s preferred lower cadence style.The truth is, Lance was just a better cyclist overall, one who happened to prefer a higher cadence riding …read more
