Originally Posted by
AzTallRider
... One of the quick and easy ways of knowing whether someone you meet on a ride is going to keep up is to evaluate their cadence. There is the occasional grinder that is also fast/strong, but it is rare.
I'd probably qualify as one of those but in truth my cadence is all over the place depending on what I'm doing. I run pretty big gears sometimes (60/11) but not all the time. It just depends on what I'm doing. That's why I have a box of chainrings and cassettes that I liberally swap in and out depending on the event that I'm doing. If you show up at an ultra-distance race, I'm not too unusual there. There is some science that says the most efficient cadence is 60rpm+/-. You see a lot of long distance racers run big gears so that we can put it in that big gear and actually recover on the bike. I can put it in that big gear and cruise at 25+mph across Kansas but when I'm climbing in the Rockies or Appalachians I prefer to spin at a much higher cadence.