Duathlon cadence dilema newbie

Anyone else come across this

I did my usual 10 mile training route today

I’m pretty new to cycling so experimented with a higher cadence for a change

so far my fastest time on my training route has been done in a fairly high gear pushing hard with burning quads at about 75-82 cadence. However at the end my legs were heavy and I felt knackered going on to the run stage.

Today I kept my cadence at 90-95 in a lower gear which felt much easier and my legs were so full of energy at the end I felt like I could of sprinted the run leg. However my avg bike time was 2mph slower I wasn’t able to keep a 90-95rpm in the higher gears.



I know continued practice and training will help but what do most tri/duathletes do?

Push higher gears at a lower cad then practice getting used to running with heavy legs? or train in the high cad at a lower gear and make the time lost up on the run leg?

I am sure you will get a good reply from someone, but you may want to check out some of the tri forums like slowtwitch...

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When I do my indoor SST rides, I'll start slower (L3) but with a higher cadence of 95-100 RPM's. By about the half-way mark I decide whether I can go harder or whether I should wait for the last 15 min mark or so. Either way, I eventually switch to a harder gear that will temporarily put me at around 88-90 RPM's. Because at that point my legs are already used to spinning faster, I'll inevitably gradually start to rev up assuring a strong finish. Try it.

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As you're probably not used to spinning that quick, I'd opt for just using one gear lower and staying somewhere 82 to 88 rpm for now when you need to go hard. Save the higher reving for the rest/recovery until you become more comfortable pedalling at 90+rpm.

There's no hard and fast rule about pedalling really fast. Some people are more efficient pedalling in the mid 80s as some are at 100+rpm.

At the end of the day it all comes down to what works best for you. If you do make a change, do so gradually.

Have you tried pedaling at 75-82 rpm most of the way, but then gearing down and spinning a bit quicker the last ~1 km to ease the transition to running? Worked for me...

Maybe another thing to consider too would be positioning on the bike. I keep hearing about benefits, regarding the transition between cycling and running, of a more forward seat position. Have you noticed anything like that Andy?

thanks for the tips guys i'll give them a try

i tired that cts train right time trial DVD yesterday, they spin for 3 x 5mins at 110 rpm
man its a tough workout! not looking forward to th enest time i do that, i could only keep at 95rpm with my hr in about 94%..
i want to work towards a higher cadence slowly, i can see it must be benificial for fresh legs and less taxing on the body rather than pushing hard and slowly on tough gears.
would most of you agree?

You mention in the OP a difference in cadence between the two efforts. However, the higher cadence effort was somewhat slower and so provided the conditions were similar that simply means you rode at a lower power, quite a bit lower given the curvelinear relationship between power and speed. That would have more to do with the legs feeling fresh than the cadence I suspect.

The trick in these events is working out whether that time sacrifice on the bike is worth it for a faster run.

But Andy is also right - in the final km before transition, it isn't a bad idea* to back off and spin a bit.


* I've got the double negative disease. Andy will know what I mean.

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Curvelinear - you should see if they'll put that word in the dictionary.

while its been nearly two weeks now,instead of going out on my 10 mile TT route and just trying to complete it faster i've concentrated on specific training. 3 x5min at max power intervals followed by 12 mins of just below threshold pace.
A horrible workout i hate because of the intense pain at over 90% HR, my vmo muscles feel like they want to explode!
but tonight doing the workout I recorded my highest average speeds per interval. A definate improvement and my average cadence was up to 95 each time which began to feel quite natural.

not tried it the 10 mile TT route to see if it carries over, i hope so
my question is am i better off carrying on doing this workout 3 x 5mins trying to workup to faster speeds each interval or would it be better to slowly month by month add one extra 5 min to the workout to extend it?