Average approx. 85

I'm not so certain that the Garmin "average" cadence is all that useful since I don't know how it's calculated. UMD's modal histogram is, IMHO, a much better tool for analyzing cadence.

My Garmin 305 reports my average cadence as 80. Even "eyeballing" the modal value by drawing an imaginary straight line through the instantaneous cadence historgram shows it to be near 80. Given that most every thing I read about road biking seems to point to 90 as a goal for average cadence, I'm going to start doing some cadence pyramids along with HR intervals to try to build my average toward 90. Given my propensity to be a "masher" it may take some work.

Here is an interesting discussion of cadence. I'm sure there are other sites that discuss this topic.

http://coachlevi.com/cycling/high-vs...edaling-speed/

Since my heart rate at 62 limits my speed, I'm working on HR intervals and cadence pyramids to help with endurance.

I prefer to think of myself as a specific idiot.

I don't recall what the 305 did, but the 705 has an option to select whether or not to include 0s in the average calculations. Unfortunately it's linked to power as well... ideally you would want to include 0s in power but not in cadence. It of course only affects what the unit shows directly, all of the data is there to be processed however you want.

The distribution is the most useful because it shows you what you do the most, not what you do on average. Most people coast far more than they realize, especially in a group ride. In some races I've had nearly 40% of the time coasting. That would make the average look very low, and completely irrelevant.

Use lower case umd. Just fyi.

That graph is a great tool in WKO. It's pretty revealing to see, for example, heart rate on that chart. I spent 7.5% of a 28 day period at 140-142 bpm (or 141-142, I forget how it gets done). Huge spike at that range. (Next most frequent range was 142-144 or however WKO splits things up). But my "average" doesn't necessarily reflect that. Is that the mean? (I just looked it up, it's the mode) I should have failed statistics but didn't because I guess pretty well on 19 out of 20 questions :)

Power is revealing too, on that same format chart.

cdr

Mia culpa.

Mean, Mode, and Median are all valid "averages" but they can be very different values, depending on the data set. Mode is indeed a valuable tool for expressing something like cadence, HR, and power. However to get a more complete picture you also must have a measurement on the "spread" or width of the curve. But now we're getting a bit deep into statistics.

A picture is worth 1,000 words. I think umd's graph says it best.

That wasn't made up data either, it was aggregate of all rides for the last 28 days.

7bmwm3gtr

test things and work on them. Some people have better slower-cadence-but-powerful-thighs. Other people have less powerful thighs, but higher muscle contraction rates. There is no good advisement here, except to ride, change cadences, monitor your times. For racing. Otherwise, do the gear changes and cadences, and figure out what YOU LIKE. What makes you feel good, and you feel, waking up, I want to go riding? If you want to race and somebody says your cadence is too slow, they may be right. Or they don't understand your legs. If you want to race, ride a lot and test yourself against racers.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4033/...0f38cb22_o.jpg


here's my last 28 days

I don't currently have cadence on my comp., but I used a stop watch and counted my revs when i was trying to figure out my upper and lower shift points:

96rpm - 114rpm

Meaning I tend to downshift when my revs go below 96 rpm and upshift at around 114 rpm. Used that to help figure out what cassette i wanted. Turned out pretty well with a compact crankset.

+1 Especially in the Road Cycling section, many people prefer to spend their time telling you why they won't answer you (ie. "use the search feature") rather than spending that same time giving you the benefit of their experience. You might want to try one of the "regional" subsections. I've found the people on those aren't such d#*kheads as on the Road Cycling section. And I'm quite sure I'll get flamed for my response. In general, just ignore the jerks, and stick to the helpful people/useful information. Good luck. BTW, I like to ride higher cadence, 100-110 most of the time.

I ride at 60rpm and climb at 30rpm...

...I'm old. :)

Hey bobthib, nice to see you as a voice of reason :) Also, nice to see you pushing our site so much, we appreciate it :)

I want to chime in first by saying I don't have any opinion on the 'topic' of the thread, but, I want to say we are going to shortly be putting out many more graphs on http://ridewithgps.com that will help people discuss topics like these. As a few people point out, it's difficult to get a real understanding of a ride with just knowing a couple numbers like average, which is where more detailed analysis comes in handy! The bucketed speed distribution Bob showed is handy, and we are going to be pushing out more variations on that for different metrics like cadence, heart rate and power (for those lucky folk).

Best thing to be armed with in an argument is data, and the best thing to show you have data is a set of pretty pictures ;)