ric_stern/RST said:
Unfortunately, you can't look at it from the point of a HRM - your HR will be lower at the same power with the lower cadence.
if your legs felt it more afterwards, perhaps that was due to the fact you rode twice the normal distance at the same power.
if you climb a hill under the same conditions at a high and low cadence both at the same velocity then your power will be the same.
ric
First, don't get me wrong. I'm not disputing what you're saying. You guys are the experts, and I am the student. I'm trying to make the peices fit. The more I understand, the better I can adjust my workout to what I can do.
Riding at distance X at 80-85RPMs was pretty much all I could do. For grins one day, I lowered my cadence by around 10RPMs and pushed bigger gears. I finished the same distance, X, averaging almost a full MPH faster and felt like I could have gone much farther, but my legs felt it more. So the next time around I did go nearly 2X distance at the same average speed as X. Today, 2 weeks after the initial 2X ride (bike was in the shop), I rode 2X again, this time in the large chain ring (told you I was a newbie). Around the same results (can't say exactly because my computer malfunctioned). I finished feeling like I could have gone even farther, perhaps even 3X.
I know the power stays the same; obviously to move the bike at the same speed over the same ride takes the same power. My confusion lies in its relation to cardio.
I thought, perhaps mistakenly, that the Heart was what cardio was all about. If your heart was pounding, your lungs had to work harder; if your lungs weren't deep enough, your heart had to work harder, etc. So the HR should be at least a somewhat accurate accounting of how you're cardio is holding up. Of course, if any of my premises is false, then that goes out the window.
So, this all leads me to the belief that, intially, my high cadence was not taking advantage of my leg strength and putting all the pressure on my under-developed cardio system, which was causing me to work out in too high of a heart rate zone, and I couldn't go the distance, and since this made the time too short, my cardio wasn't advancing. So by switching to harder gears and giving myself that 10RPM difference, I moved the burden away from the cardio to exploit other bodily resources, thus the sudden dramatic improvement. It also seems as though, if I'm winded, I can just ignore the pain in my thighs for a few seconds and push gears at a very low cadence to catch my beath before shifting down and bringing the cadence back up.
Perhaps, though, this is due to an imbalance in my body, where my legs are in much better condition than my cardio. Once they balance out, perhaps my cadence will come up naturally to maintain that balance. This perspective is perhaps a little odd here, where most people have either been cycling for a while or were in shape already and started cycling for something different.
However, if this is all wrong, then by all means chime in. I'm not saying what is, I'm saying what I believe through reading this forum and from my own experiences. I have no ego to bruise here, and I want to understand.