Cycling Cadence & Power
You will likely be better served to push a little harder gear at a lower cadence. I say likely because cadence is very personal, and you may be one of those that benefits from a higher cadence.
This off season, work on your leg strength by pushing those lower gears, staying in your saddle on climbs, and hitting the gym.
Life is short. Play hard and get dirty doing it.
You will likely be better served to push a little harder gear at a lower cadence. I say likely because cadence is very personal, and you may be one of those that benefits from a higher cadence.
+1, For me the ideal average cadence is 95-100. Try pushing harder gears with a lower cadence to find the sweet spot where your power output is higher while your Heart rate remains constant.
For the off-season, slow your cadence down by shifting up a couple gears and really grind out the miles over the winter. If you like to race at 105-110, which is really quite high for a triathlete, do your long, slow training at 85-90 and really concentrate on pulling through the full pedal stroke.
I don't know how your run is coming off a cadence of 105+, but I know my legs hate me when I try to run coming off even 95. My best run times have come off rides at 80-85.
I was thinking that most responses would be in favor of trying to reduce my cadence and turning bigger gears.
xc800runner: My first two races the run was hell, but I attributed it to doing very few bricks and still getting use to triathlons. My last and final race this year was an olympic and the run actually felt very good and I had my fastest mile average of the year at 6:43/mile.









I have finished my first season now of triathlons and am anxious to work on my cycling this off-season to help me to compete with my competition. My question though is, is it better to have a high cadence of 100-110 or one between 90-100?
Like I have mentioned in the past I usually avg. 22 mph in my races with a cadence that avg. 105-108. I am trying to work on my speed and get my avg. to 23 or 24 mph, my AG & Overall competition is avg. 24-26 mph, and I can get to those avg. speeds for short periods of time by reducing my cadence to 95-100 or so and turning bigger gears but my endurence is greatly affected where as with a cadence in the 100's I feel like I can ride all day at a 20-22 mph avg. and not really notice much fatigue.
Any thought from experienced riders whether I should continue to work on slowly increasing my speed with a 100-110 cadence or whether I should reduce my cadence to 90-100, push bigger gears, and work on my endurance at that power output?