Does bike cadence matter?

I've been reading a few different articles on line about cadence this week.
The consensus seems to be aim for a cadence of 80+

I haven't really taken any notice of my cadence until recently.
I've just upgraded to a CS200 CAD which tells me Avg cadence post ride.
My last 2 rides have had averages of 81 and 84.
That's with me being focussed on trying to keep cadence up.
My regular ride style would be pushing a bigger gear at a lower cadence though.

One of the articles I read, which I can't find again, suggested that higher cadence riding would leave the legs fresher for running off the bike.
another article (http://www.trifuel.com/training/bike/cycling-cadence-and-pedaling-economy) seems to indicate a bigger bloke like me should be mashing more than spinning.

Any good resources/evidence/experience either way?

I've put together a fairly long winded reply - really just a bunch of my own ideas from experience rather than evidence that it works...

I don't think there is any single correct answer to this. It's a very personal aspect of triathlon and I think the studies that are available tend to reflect that. As a lone example of that, Joe Friel's post highlights the same thing.

Whilst the number of external factors may make studies of this difficult, the good news is that keeping in mind some basic rules, it's not too difficult to figure out what works best for you.

A starting point is to look at the roadies. Spend any time in a bunch, or watching a bunch of elite road cyclists and you will notice they generally pedal 90+rpm (cruisy recovery rides excluded). These are the guys and girls to emulate, not specifically cadence wise but technique wise - the smoothness of their pedal strokes, the point at which the get out of the saddle on a slight rise, the fluidness when they're pushing hard (you rarely see a roadie mash a gear - it almost always looks easy).

But we're talking triathlon here - so things are a little different. We want to take that "roadie" technique and apply it to a triathlon situation, which requires us to economically get from T1 to T2 as fast as possible and retain our ability to put a good run on the scoreboard.

In doing so, what we need to figure out is whether we expend more energy and exhaust our muscles more quickly when using a standard 90+rpm cadence, or slightly slower 75-85rpm.

If we're "mashing" a gear, it's a good indication that cadence is sub-optimal. In HIM and IM events, a good rule of thumb (from somewhere in a Transitions post) was that if you're feeling lactic, you've just added 5mins to your run time.

I probably wouldn't recommend aiming below 80rpm. If 80+rpm is a struggle, then I would consider doing some high cadence interval work (short intervals 30s-1min) until you feel comfortable pedaling 100-110rpm for several minutes at a time. Your legs will take a while to adapt but that will be your muscles adapting a quicker firing pattern (or something like that).

As for in a race situation, I like to increase my cadence in the last couple of kilometres of the bike and have a bit of a stretch - get the blood flowing around other areas of the legs, loosen things up and prepare them to move at similar cadence to what I would run at and lessen the shock of jumping off the bike and suddenly running into transition.

There lots of debating going on about cadences.

I think initially you should just self select a cadence that you are comfortable with. Over time that will change depending on how you train.

Train with cyclists and you'll find your cadence will slowly rise, because of the need to counteract quick changes in pace and you need that quickness in being able to turn over the pedals quickly to meet that need. Can't really do that with a low cadence.

However, spend enough time with triathletes who TT at sub threshold paces and you'll find that you'll become more comfortable and efficient at lower cadences. You don't need explosive changes in paces and therefore you can settle into a rhythm that allows you to turn the pedals around slower, thus being more efficient, because it is not about maximal pedal forces, but sub maximal pedal forces.

Need to keep in mind that it takes energy to pull your leg up and over the course of IM there will be a big difference in 90-95rpm as opposed to 75-80rpm.
By soft pedalling at lower cadences at IM effort I feel you are more efficient then at high cadences.

fluro

Alot of the good IMers tend to have a low cadence and its something I have been pondering a bit lately. I generally agree with the find your natural cadence idea. I ride with a good mix of athletes here in Canberra and notice that the short course elite guys have very high cadence, but many of the IMers tend to have significantly lower cadence. I personally have found it beneficial to "widen" my cadence range so that I can respond better to many situations. I also think for myself that the high cadence I preffered indicated a lack of strength. 1 year in the gym and holding a gear a bit longer when going over rollers TTing has corrected this alot so that now I'm a stronger biker and more adaptable to things like rollers which are pretty much all you get on Australian triathlon courses.

I wonder if the high cadences for 5-6hrs affects the ability to run better due to the extra muscle firings that are required than with a low cadence. The AIS preach power through cadence and I'm wondering if this is more specific to short course racers hence why the elite ITU style guys around here all spin like a mo fo. So I'm experimenting and am trying to hold around 80-90 (usually 95-100) for a bit. After the initial feeling of "gee this is hard" it quickly becomes the norm.

I also wonder just like some drugs use different metabolic pathways to have their affect. Would different cadences use diffeent nerve firing sites or pathways (for want of a better term) or even just the different rate of firing save the running ones (cadence 90-95)for later eg Vernay, Chrissie etc

One very successful coach preaches low cadence and mashing for his athletes. Although, I believe his most successful ones are IM/HIMers.

From my own observations I have noticed that the runners build guys like me generally have a high cadence that I believe is due to lack of strength as running doesn't require the same kind of power. This is why I believe runners need to get into the gym for 6-12mths and also get into the habit of holding one gear higher than they want when pushing over rollers. After 6mths in the gym addressing this I found I naturally pushed over rollers in the gear I was in rather than changing up. This saved me huge time at Port Mac where I usually died doing the piddly spin over what was not enough to call a climb. The problem for runners is that by the time the run comes around in IM their legs are too shelled to really unleash. My experience from developing general and a short amount of max strength greatly impoved my IM run time as I have runners legs.
The larger guys (Alex for example) tend to find a more natural cadence of 80-90ish. There is a guy here that is new to tri who is a tall muscular build who naturally seems to ride his best around 85 (he didn't have a cadence computer until recently) and I said to him find what is comfy and suggested that alot of guys his size tend to have that cadence. I'm not sure about below 75-80 though. For these guys I don't think much strength work is required apart from bullet proofing them from the injuries they may incur running and specific strengthening of swimming muscles. Like developing the glute med among other muscles for running. They would benefit more from weight loss as they generally have power to burn.

In a number of studies a very high % or runners that had ITB ijuries displayed weak to very weak glute med (among others). After a program to strengthen this muscle in particular almost all of the runners found their ITB ijuries were cured if not significantly better. This was to explain the bit about the glute med above

Thoughts??? Big guys???