Originally Posted by hawkijohn
You mentioned cadence, I'm wondering if a computor showing cadence would be good for a novice like me to help me stay in the proper gearing range.
Here's my experience/thoughts if it helps any:
I used a relatively inexpensive cyclometer with cadence (Cateye Astrale) from the onset. It helped me to push myself to keep a higher cadence than I might have without it. I focused on trying to keep my cadence in the 90-100 range which I was able to train myself to do except on longer climbs where your cadence will generally decrease. My goal was to keep my heart rate and my cadence in a certain ranges.
Over time I can pretty much guess what both my heart rate and my cadence are, but I still use the displays occassionally. As my leg strength has increased over time, I've found that when I'm trying to maximize my power output (time trials, pulling groups, closing gaps, etc), my cadence is a little lower. I now actually perform best when my cadence is around 85. On climbs I strive to keep it around 70-as long as that doesn't drive my heart rate too high.
During time trials, some folks use their speed as a gauge to change gears. I've found that if I ignore speed and focus on cadence it helps me to get the most out of what I can do.