stapfam

Over the years my cadence has changed a lot. Early days and my cadence rarely rose above 70. This was probably due to the gearing of the bike and my inexperience but gradually my cadence rose a bit. Then I started to do some of the more serious rides and found that If I want to finish a long ride- then I have to protect my legs a bit. Low cadence and hills meant that the quad muscles were really going through it. By raising the cadence a bit and lower gears- I found that I could do longer rides with less leg trouble. This was proved when we got the Tandem. Initially the gearing on this was too high for offroad hills so new sprockets on the front and a change to 9 speed to get a 32 on the back and we were comfortable. Cadence still did not worry us but that lower gearing did make it so we could do the longer rides easier. Then this year we got a cadence meter. We knew what we were comfortable with so just checked on the meter and found on the road, around 90 was comfortable. 90 would give us a top speed of 27mph and at 100 we were doing 30mph. Surprising thing was it was not speed that dictated our rides- it was cadence. Pointless doing 30mph if the spin rate was too high for you. Then out with others and they would be in 52/12 and doing 25mph. We were comfortable at 48/13 because our speed matched theirs but our cadence was correct to us.

If anything- I have found that my cadence has increased with experience. Legs are a lot stronger- but unfortunately those hills are getting steeper and longer too, so the lower gears are getting used more than they used to. Just to keep the cadence up.