bubsy said:l hear ya on the cadence side of training, l have been doing my shorter intervals which l do at higher watts 8-15m @ 100-105rpm Vs my longer intervals & races which l usually prefer 90-95rpm, the reason l do this is because if l grind away @ 90rpm at the upper end of my aerobic capacity for an entire session the next day the legs really pay for it and l can bearly manage more than a recovery ride the next day and struggle to get my cadence above 90rpm, howerver at 10rpm higher same watts same duration for the session (even though it pushes my hr up quicker & is less comfortable than 95rpm) the next day l can head back out & do 2-3hrs in lower L3 & the legs still feel fresh and l stuggle to contain the urge to push hard for a second day in a row so l sometimes intentionly cut the ride short to avoid digging too big of a hole for myself. Since doing this my CTL has increased as l can train more often and better quality training which more importantly has led to quite a significant power increase in the last 8-10wks than l have had in the last 12mths right across my entire power curve except L7 intervals which l almost never have
So for this little black duck cadence is just as important as diet and rest in my training plan.
The higher the power, the higher the optimum cadence. Unfortunately, the body sense force better than power. Therefore, without an objective measurement, most tend to overgear simply because bigger gears feel like more power is being produced.
When riding on my PT300 Pro trainer, a "single-speed" machine where my primary metric is power, I find that my optimum cadence for threshold training is high-80s, VO2 max training 95-100 RPM and 30-second interval training over 100 RPM.
I highly recommend not monitoring anything but power if you hvae a PM; select a cadence that feels easiest for that power and you have found your optimum cadence.
