Un-Learning the Mash

My legs felt surprisingly good during Saturday's ride and as a follow up with training I decided to try and change my cadence for the better.  I tend to be a bit of a masher (slow cadence pushing a big gear) on the pedals which is great for shorter efforts but it is hard to maintain that kind of power / effort for longer rides.  There are many other variables in training but this and the power to weight ratio are probably the two biggest opportunities for improvement with me.

My natural comfort cadence zone (or learned is more apt) is around 70-75 rpm's.  All recent research shows that you should be in the 85-90 range...meaning you are pushing an easier gear but spinning the legs faster (essentially putting out the same power as if you were pushing a harder gear at a slower cadence).  It is a really difficult habit to break as you end up resorting back to your habits when tired.  On long endurance events it really is much more beneficial to train the heart to work under load as opposed to the legs because your legs will wear out faster.  Regardless, the legs will always get worked but with a higher cadence the theory is you won't have to go into the reserve as fast (as long as you keep the efforts mostly aerobic and don't go into the red zone relative to your heart rate).  All this to say, that I spent an hour on the indoor trainer trying to maintain an 85 rpm cadence.

Indoor trainer? summer?  yup yup....unfortunately our weather pattern as of late has been nice sunny days and then the afternoon thunderstorms build and the skies let loose with thunder and rain (and an occasional hail storm).

It will take some persistence to change my cadence as there will be two challenges to overcome....the first will be that as a singlespeeder, you are often forced to a slower cadence as the terrain determines the speed at which your legs spin...this single-speed mentality will be a hard one to break...the other challenge is trying to teach an old dog a new trick...as I would sometimes tell the Masters swim team when I coached them 'if you have had a bad habit for 10 yrs, it might take 10 yrs to un-learn it'.  Changing a swimmer's technique who has been doing something in-efficiently for years can often take a long time to change.  The above statement is probably a little over the top but it does ring somewhat true in the sense that it takes time to change and it becomes more of a challenge when tired as we just revert to our hard-wired tendencies until we re-wire.

As for climbing.....I managed to hit the garage for a good bouldering sesh this morning and I can slowly start to feel the powa' coming back (still have a ways to go but small victories are still a step in the right direction!).  The session lasted a little longer today as the muscles and tendons start to wake up from the climbing hibernation of 2 + yrs!  I was able to link up more moves on each burn and session was also longer...all the while noticing some moves are getting slightly easier.  I will take that kind of progress (albeit slow) any day....