Sunday, July 25, 2010

Spin Those Wheels

Last weekend I got sprung.

Coach Dave finally caught up with the fact that my average cadence on my bike rides hasn't been as high as he wants it to be.  For the uninitiated cadence is all about how fast you're pedalling, a bit like engine revs, and is expressed in revolutions per minute (rpm).

Last year while training for the half ironman my typical cadence would rarely go over 75rpm and some average cadences on a training ride could drop as low as 69rpm.  This year hasn't been much better although the last couple of months have seen some 76s and one ride that averaged 79 rpm.  Still not high enough to keep Dave happy though.

A low cadence isn't a flash idea because it puts too much load on your quads.  It's common for cyclists with strong legs to rely on grinding out the gears and focusing on power, however for an ironman distance it will simply waste too much energy.  What is more efficient is spinning at higher cadence which places less load on the legs.

So Dave really wants me to be achieving an average cadence of 85rpm or higher on our rides, and to give me the necessary practice he set me a couple of hell bike sessions this weekend.  The programmes for Saturday and Sunday came through and I just about died looking at them.  Saturday called for a 2 hr 30min ride with cadence drills including 15 minute splits at 90rpm, 95rpm and 100rpm.  100rpm?!   Insane...  Sunday's ride wouldn't be much better with a 4 hour ride prescribed and 20 minute splits at 90rpm and 95rpm, and 15 minute splits at 100rpm.

First challenge, though, was more mundane.  How on earth would I remember all the drills over the course of the ride?  A small amount of ingenuity came into play - I printed out the drills with their time checks and laminated them.  A trusty strip of blu-tac fixed the schedule to the bracket where my aero drink bottle usually sits and so it was right in front of me for easy reference next to the bike computer during the ride.

My view during a ride - oh, sometimes I look up as well.

So I headed out to give it a go.  Saturday was a solo ride while Andi, Anna and Tony joined me for Sunday's "fun".  Surprisingly it wasn't too bad.  Maintained a pretty good pace and I survived both days - even managed a 60 minute Tour de Garage spin on Sunday evening in addition to Sunday's ride.  Getting into a 100rpm rhythm was a bit of a challenge but definitely do-able.

Even more significantly I managed to achieve an average cadence of 89 rpm on both days.  The scale of improvement was perfectly summed by Dave's response when I texted him Saturday night to let him know the news:  "Holy shit", he replied, "Are your legs still attached?".



2 comments:

  1. seems to me that coach Dave has a streak of "smart ass" LOL ..

    ReplyDelete