jschen

I've tried the following on my trainer before. Pedal at a steady relaxed effort in a relatively big gear (and thus low cadence). Shift down a gear, maintaining the same perceived pedaling effort (based on my legs, not on my cardio). As expected, the cadence goes up. Less obviously, the speed goes up a bit, too. You can tell based on the pitch of the sound the resistance unit makes. It makes sense, though, since with a higher cadence and the same pedaling force, I necessarily (according to the laws of physics) am making more power. Downshift another gear. Same result. A few more times. Eventually, I'm still pedaling at the same relatively relaxed leg effort, but my cadence is now at about 110-120 RPM, at which point I start going anaerobic. I was hoping to find an optimal cadence for my body, but all I found out is that I have chicken legs, and my optimal cadence tends to be stratospheric.

That said, on relatively flat ground, I find that the harder I try to ride, the higher my naturally chosen cadence. Maybe 50 RPM when tooling around in a social ride with friends. 80 RPM for easy relaxed riding. 90-100 RPM for endurance riding like in a century. 110-120 RPM when trying to go pretty hard (but sustainable for minutes at a time). I've found myself naturally selecting cadences as high as 130 RPM when trying to go really hard. Not sprinting... just staying seated and spinning along. I do this because I have chicken legs and have trouble maintaining high pedaling forces. But I can spin along at relatively high cadences with low pedaling force and be much more comfortable. Your balance between cadence and pedaling force may be different from mine, and it may be worth doing a similar experiment on a trainer to see what you find most comfortable and to get a firsthand feel for the relationship between power, cadence, and pedaling force.