Have been getting back into the training groove with my new Powertap. Have been doing a repeat 50 mile ride, pretty much at a hard pace for me where I can hold steady without dying. 6000ft of elevation. Takes me about 3hrs.

Have done 6 of these in a row in the last 6 weeks to get a sense of my power on the rides, and get use to riding more evenly. The first 2 weeks were expectedly worse as I wasn't used to the overall training volume, and I was always tired, but in the past 4 weeks, have been feeling more normal, and getting faster each week.

One notable thing today - because I've been doing a fair amount of hillwork on this ride (none on weekdays) I decided to ride the whole ride at a borderline mash cadence for myself. This meant pretty much turning up the gearing until it was uncomfortable to pedal at faster than 83ish rpm. Def not a big-time mash (those are <60rpm) but definitely a good deal slower than my normal 90+.

End result? Normalized power a whopping 20 watts higher than my last 4 rides over 50 miles. (Compare to 2-3 watt normalized power increases in past 4 weeks) Interestingly, my cardio didn't take a big hit - TRIMP score was actually LESS today (the composite HR score, kind of like a TSS for HR but not really the same) meaning my cardio was still fine despite mashing the higher gears. I think I just respond better to offloading more to the legs than the heart. Was a bit surprising to me, since the common knowledge always says for these long rides, higher cadence = better, but at least for me, I think it keeps me working harder to stay at that borderline mash cadence so I put up a better effort overall.

Powermeter is good stuff for this sort of analysis as well. Although not trying to be totally tongue in cheek, but my average speed for those loops would have reflected the speed increase just as well in retrospect (but obviously not give the granular data.)

I find myself self selecting to lower cadence when I am solo. No accelerations to follow. But in a group, the optimal cadence goes right back up to 90 or higher.

Not surprising. The optimal cadence for solo efforts is probably below 90 for most people. The major benefit of a high cadence is responding to pace changes. Like Ratliff, I find myself turning a bigger gear solo and a lower gear in groups. In actual races, my cadence is often higher still. In fact, I bet there's a significant difference in my average cadence even between criteriums (higher) and road races (lower).

I can ride at a quick cadence (110 or so) or mash (85). When I want to go fast like a hard solo effort, a TT, a race, or a tri, I use the 85 cadence. Just based on all the people on sites like this or friends saying I need to use a higher cadence, I worked at using a higher one. I can do 5 or 6 six hours at 110-110 but I'm not as fast as using a slower cadence. To me it's just another example of what works for many doesn't apply to everyone

I found last year that I am faster on climbs if I use a lower gear and higher rpm than I had been using.

Just shows that it varies between individuals and you need to do your own testing to find out what works for you.