Originally Posted by
Branko D
Do you actually measure cadence using a device or no? Self reported cadence without measurement can be quite a bit off. It is like when people talk about power but don't measure it 🤷
Left to their own devices, the legs do some sort of resistance matching. If I'm riding easy my cadence will always be lower because it just feels natural. 60 rpm at 110% of FTP is a miserable experience, but 60 rpm at 60-65% of FTP feels perfectly natural.
Some people train low cadence on purpose, too. My wife's triathlon coach had her do loads of low cadence drills (it's somewhat popular in triathlon, idea is it improves the run I think). So we're on a training ride together, riding at same speed and similar power, same 11-30 cassette and I'm on 50-34 chainrings and she on a 55-42 with a 15 rpm lower cadence. It's trainable, although I don't see why you would.
I think I've said several times in this thread that I have never measured my cadence. It's back-calculated based on speed and gears. I measure my speed and the gearing is intentionally selected. I don't care about cadence at all, as you suggest it just sort of adjusts itself to whatever I'm doing. TBH, one of the other posters keeps bringing up my cadence, but I don't think it's terribly interesting as I just think it's the obvious consequence of my gear preferences, which was the subject of this thread.