Cadence - When do you Lug?
In principle I will be taking on some long and steep climbs in a couple of months. And the question of gearing is still on my mind.
In my case it seems to me that, assuming that I am putting out power somewhere in the range of my ftp, that a cadence down in the 70 to 75 range is where things start to become inefficient. I think that I could pedal at 80 rpm or 95 rpm (at around my ftp) without making a huge change in physiological effort. But somewhere in the 70 to 75 rpm range and (at the same power output) I will find that the time that I can spend at roughly ftp is going to go down. And things go downhill (as in harder to maintain) pretty quickly in a very small rpm range. E.G., there seems to be a huge difference between 67 and 72 rpm.
What have others found about this in their riding. I am just curious. A new RD (or not) for my bike is driving this question.
Thanks.
dave
ps. It is a difficult experiment to run in my case because I just don't have any climbs that are long enough to test this (everything around here is up and down constantly, so constant power/rpm is not something that I can achieve on our roads).
dave
In my case it seems to me that, assuming that I am putting out power somewhere in the range of my ftp, that a cadence down in the 70 to 75 range is where things start to become inefficient. I think that I could pedal at 80 rpm or 95 rpm (at around my ftp) without making a huge change in physiological effort. But somewhere in the 70 to 75 rpm range and (at the same power output) I will find that the time that I can spend at roughly ftp is going to go down. And things go downhill (as in harder to maintain) pretty quickly in a very small rpm range. E.G., there seems to be a huge difference between 67 and 72 rpm.
What have others found about this in their riding. I am just curious. A new RD (or not) for my bike is driving this question.
Thanks.
dave
ps. It is a difficult experiment to run in my case because I just don't have any climbs that are long enough to test this (everything around here is up and down constantly, so constant power/rpm is not something that I can achieve on our roads).
dave