BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

Was it bicycling magazine that just had an article about patellofemoral syndrome in cyclists? Basically, improper alignment OR pedalling in too high a gear (at too low a cadence) can wear away at the material that separates the actual knee joint from the knee cap. That can set up arthritis-like symptoms (and they are NOT fun...!) Too tired at the moment to go dig the article out, but the extra wear on your knees is something to think about.

I also prefer riding in higher gears and mashing rather than spinning. In fact, I use 175mm cranks for this reason. I don't know why I like it, it just feels better to me.

Swalfoort does have a point, though. I rode around last summer on a fixed gear with a stupidly high gear. Even stupidly high for someone who like mashing, it was at 52x17. My knees still hate me for it. A little mashing is probably ok, but too much equals a world of pain.

I am with you completely. I like high gears and low cadence. Unfortunately, I also know it is terrible for my knees and can tell whenever I ride more than 30 or 40 miles. Soon, I will be getting a road bike with decent gears as not to be a cripple when I am 40.

What do you mean by "faster"? 80? 100? 120?

I find 80 to be the most comfortable, I might go a little faster on the flat and a little slower on the hills but once I drop much below 70 climbing I'm probably going to have to stand up soonish.

Like Sara said low cadence = more strain on your knees, and that doesn't improve with age

Also I think higher cadence is more aerobic, so that's something to consider. I think it's "natural" to pedal slower, ie novice riders tend to have low cadence. So, you have to train yourself to spin faster. The same is true with distance running, although I find it WAY harder to maintain a fast running cadence.

Oh i know all about PFS and PF arthritis. I diagnose these several times a week and send people off to therapy for the former and sometimes see people in the OR with the latter. I sometimes get medial knee pain, and i suspect a small meniscus tear (but nothing so terrible that i need to get it checked out). I have never gotten anterior knee pain, and i used to be a runner also. I have always done quad exercises on the machines at the gym over the years, and i think that helps with patellar alignment, which is something some of you with PFS might Be able to do to help yourselves out.

I prefer low gear, high cadence when staying in the saddle. If I use a higher gear up a hill, then I'm out of the saddle to keep my weight over them. I try to stay cognizant of the strain on my knees, because I didn't treat them well growing up and they won't allow me to run long distances anymore.

I read the 80? 100? 120? and thought it was mph at first. Hey, I am still drinking first coffee. I am not in my early morning ride routine yet.

FWIW, I mash and give my legs and knees rest by alternating the push/pull. I ride with shoes and clipless pedals, which allows me to stay seated uphill and work the back of my legs, and use that same pull stroke as a rest for the legs and knees on the flats.

Training like that on a single speed also transitions well when I use a geared bike for longer rides. I have never race trained, so that routine might not work for you if your focus is more specific. I was training to break 6 hours on a century. I came in at 6:16 this past Sunday (moving time). I think it is carry over from last year since I got to ride a good bit over the winter.

I also have some discomfort now and then post ride below my knee caps. I could be wrecking it. I'll keep tabs on this thread .

I am a higher gear and lower cadence person. A faster cadence dosen't feel natural to me.

I have no idea what my cadence normally is. If I had to guess, I would say it varies wildly, depending. But I can't say even that for sure.

I outgrew my last single speed when I was about 11. I like gears. I don't care to mash if I can help it. I'm adding a third ring to whatever bikes can be so adapted just so I can stay on the bike instead of hiking up various hills.

I do like a slower cadence, without mashing, to practice altering the tip of my foot when pedaling: toes up from about 10 o'clock to about 2 o'clock (looking sideways at the right pedal), then toes down from about 4 o'clock to 8 o'clock. I find with my plain old platform pedals and street shoes that I can squeeze out a bit more oomph from my leg muscles without standing out of the saddle. However, the ability to do this drops significantly as my cadence increases.

I'd say I'm somewhere in the 50-60 range when I do this best, maybe even slower than that. I'm visualizing rotating 45 rpm and 78 rpm records on turntables as I think about this. CDs rotate at about 400 rpm; I'm pretty sure I'm pedaling slower than that.

i've always had the impression (and i'm pretty sure i've even read) that most everyone starts out thinking a higher gear at a lower cadence feels more natural. hell, i think it took until the 80s for racers to get over that notion.

but i think if you train yourself to ride at a higher cadence (80+, i guess), it will not only treat your knees better, but you'll come to prefer it. certainly, you can generate more power spinning at a higher cadence--sometimes i gear up and slow my cadence if i want to go slower. i think i feel most natural at around 90 rpm.

When I'm paying attention, I shoot for 90 rpm.

@Stef - knowing your position in ortho, I felt like an idiot telling you of the dangers of PFS/chondromalaccia. But, for purposes of education/discussion, I felt the need to explain it somewhat more fully than I would have just for you!

For those wondering, "Stars and Stripes Forever" is 120 beats per minute (just think the song and it'll work, remember it's a march, not a race). I find that I tend to prefer 60 rpm for each foot, and often hum stars & stripes when I hit it perfectly. I spend most of my time in lower gears, i like to coast down hills and pick it up on the other side as i slow. when i'm trying to keep up with cars on the flat is the only time i deviate, pedaling for all i'm worth in a semi-high gear. doesn't last long.

But even in running, i had a single, plodding pace. i'm not a sprinter. i've never been that strong. my only athletic ability seems to be to be able to avoid stopping for an extended period of time once i get started. i can go forever, just not very fast or very strong. i learned it in middle school, where my coach said "if the next step kills you, stop, otherwise, take one more. repeat." i'm not dead yet. i'm also not very fast or strong. meh.

"if the next step kills you, stop, otherwise, take one more. repeat."

That sort of thinking is what has gotten me through the MS150 for the last two years, haha.

People with more fast-twitch muscle fiber usually prefer a somewhat lower cadence, more slow-switch a little higher. If you ride a lot, you probably already know what works best for you.

Been thinking about this a lot lately. I recently got a geared bike for the first time in a long time, was riding a fixed gear set up at 42x14 for about four years before that. I never had any joint problems doing that (still superstitiously thanking Kraynick and Sheldon Brown for the kooky fixed gear Biopace idea), but it really is amazing the difference in aerobic/anaerobic exercise I'm getting now. I used to just mash, mash, mash everywhere I went on that bike, so much that every single ride was more like a weightlifting set than a jog.

I remember having sore muscles more than ever being out of breath. It's been weird to transition from all that to having the ability to downshift and spin up big hills, since I've always thought of myself as more of a sprinter than an endurance cyclist.

The natural cadence, which evolved into your nervous system when your ancestors got up on two feet is about 60 rpm. That's why musical marches are at 120 bpm. The natural tendency is to use your legs at that tempo - regardless of the efficiency of it.

Bicycling isn't a natural movement, though. A higher cadence is much more efficient - but your neurology still ikes 60.

For Stef, it may be that changing the pedal length, the frame or alignment, or maybe training would make a higher cadence easier for her. OTOH, Stef is not a beginner. I guess she knows her way around a bike pretty well.

Different people are best at differnt cadences. Jan Ullrich's cadence, for example, is famous for being much slower than Lance Armstrong's. Lance's cadence is extraordinarily fast, even for a racer. Jan's is slow for a racer. Different physiology.

If Lance wasn't around and Jan had won mutiple Tours, then there might be less emphasis for duffers getting high cadence. (although either of them has a higher cadence than most of us).

The important thing is to have a low gear option for the hills. That way, if a higher cadence is more efficient for your body, hills will have the opportunity to train you - and the hills here will rise to that opportunity.

For me, my cadence has increased a bunch over the years.

I still like a slow cadence for resting while going downhill, though.

If you are putting out 80% of your maximum output, then 90 might be an efficient cadence.

If you are putting out 15% of your max? Then 70 rpm is a fast waste of energy.

When you see someone who is pedalling silly fast for how slow they are moving, count their cadence. Usually it is about about 65 rpm - which is pretty slow. But if they are pedalling that fast to go 6 mph on the flat, it isn't efficient and it looks geeky.

Ooops!

I've been following this since I just bought my first real 'cycling computer'*.

I took it out for a spin this weekend and tried to keep my cadence between 70-90 the whole time. Not only did I finish one of my standard routes about 30% quicker, but I was not nearly as drained as I normally am... so now I'm actively working on getting my cadence up.

It felt really strange, I kinda felt like Wiley Coyote when he runs of the cliff and his legs are going and going but he's not getting anywhere. (Even when I was going 20+ mph). But I imagine I'll get used to it at some point.

---

* not really a cycling computer... it's an ant+ dongle for my iphone and the appropriate sensors(hrm, cadence and speed). I'll be posting a review sometime this week or next.

Myddrin - I'm intrigued at the 30% number. Though on the hills I travel I often don't have a lower gear to go to (and thus speed up my cadence), I'm wondering if by modifying the cassette or something I too could achieve such results, given my current cadence is quite slow (I figured i wasn't mashing 'cause I stay seated, I guess that distinction is my own little meaningless invention, good to know!).

Or perhaps if I ride more, I'll be stronger, and will be eventually be strong enough to move faster up the same hills in the same gears. But that solution takes patience and time, guh.

Still, perhaps some of the reasons newbies tend to mash is that they simply run out of granny gears? Get used to the effort, and learn it as normal?

(I have off the shelf specialized cirrus elite whatevers, in case anybody's wondering)

@ejwme - It looks like I accidently deleted the part of my post that says that the 30% is a combination of a new, lighter bike and the higher cadence.

That being said, I rode the new bike into work today w/o the cadence monitor and my time was exactly the same as on the old bike. And I felt more drained after an 11 mile ride than I did after a 32 mile ride on Sunday w/ the monitor.

So I'm fairly certain that at least some of that 30% is from the higher cadence.

perhaps some of the reasons newbies tend to mash is that they simply run out of granny gears

On an MS150 ride a few years back, I came upon a newbie who was agonizingly hauling herself up a hill at about 20 rpm. I saw she had 4 or 5 lower gears than the ones she was using, so in my ambassador hat, I asked her if she would like a tip for getting up this hill, and suggested she might try using an easier gear.

"Oh, I'm saving those for when I really need them", she replied.

I guess she was afraid of running out of granny gears.

running out of granny gears is an emotionally painful thing. luckily it is easy to recover (personally) by remembering that I am on my bicycle and automatically everything is better than when I am not on my bicycle.

but that is hilarious, I never thought of "hoarding" granny gears.

@ejwme running out of granny gears is an emotionally painful thing.

A requirement for any bike I own is to have as many granny gears as I might want. Even pulling a loaded trailer.

So, if I switch from my lowest gear to walking, there is little - if any - change in speed.

Why have my climbing ability limited by bike marketers having some macho bug up their butts? Why have 24 speeds, if you don't have the 2 most useful ones?

hoarding granny gears

BWAHAHAHA!

Rich, I tell you! I'm RICH !

I tend to go high-gear low cadence too, and this bit me in the ass when I did that stationary bike relay this past Saturday. Oh god, the first 15 min leg, my lungs started burning 3 minutes in... It was pure torture.

The second time I went down to what I thought would be too inefficient to maintain... It was a BILLION times better.

I think I might try to work on a higher cadence and lower gear combination now and see if I do any better.

think I might try to work on a higher cadence and lower gear combination now

The next question is, how fast is too fast?

If you're pedalling so fast that you're bouncing around on the seat, then you're wasting energy, so slow down. It definitely does take "neuro-muscular programming" your legs to learn how to make smooth circles at high cadences. Rollers (real rollers) are good for that. 80-90 rpm is the tried and true target for most people. It is hard to know where that is, unless you use a cadence meter or ride with an experienced crowd (or even better, share a tandem with someone who has this down.)

If you have an ordinary cyclecomputer, you can target a particular speed in a particular gear. Just use one of the online gear calculators to find out what gear will give you 15 mph at 90 rpm on your own bike, and then go out on the jail trail and see what that feels like.

Low-cadence riders look graceful as they glide, seemingly effortlessly, down the street.

High-cadence riders look like gerbils running in a wheel.

Or so it seems, sometimes.

That said, I try for a high cadence; "high" of course is relative, For me it means staying above 70 and aiming for about 80 as a steady pace. Racers (as I understand it) can put out 120. Woof.

After cycling for a while, I discovered that maintaining a steady high cadence was really the easy way to go; you continue to pedal at the same rate: if it gets hard you gear down, if it gets easy you gear up. A triple helps (especially at this time of year). A high cadence also gives your pedaling some momentum, so if things get tough on a hill you have time to react.

The practical reason is preserving my knees. I've already had a medial meniscus removed from my right knee. If I screw up and put in too much stress, I'll have pain for weeks.

I trained myself by counting pedal strokes and checking seconds on my computer. Look down, do 15 revs, look down, should be 10 sec. Keeps your mind focused on what you're doing. By the time I got a computer with cadence I didn't really need it.

Although, on mine (cateye astrale) you can make cadence the primary (big) display and not show speed at all if you want. I found that to be awesome on the MS150 - no distraction of how fast I was going, just enough info to all me to pick the right gear to keep spinning comfortably. I really try to think of it that way - shifting gears is in response to cadence changes, not the other way around.

Double post (my fault - hit send twice)

Shifting gears is in response to cadence changes, not the other way around

Yes! That's exactly, succinctly, right.

Right on the nose Todd. Also my natural cadence is about 95rpm. I just need to get back in shape so I can handle higher gearing at that cadence.

for those with trainers and internets, google "online metronome". There are tons, set to appropriate speed, put laptop beside trainer, pedal away to internalize the cadence. For musical types, just set an actual metronome. I've got one the size of a pocket calculator that goes from 6 bpm to 300 bpm, picked it up cheap. Could duct tape it to my shoulder for outside riding so as to hear it better, but they're normally pretty loud (must be heard over loud instruments).

Mick, your evil cackle made my day I'm gonna play with my metronome and trainer to see if I need lower gears than came on the bike. I suspect I just need better thighs than came on the owner.

@ejwme that is a brilliant idea that never occured to me. Googling iphone metronome works too.

@ejwme I'm gonna play with my metronome ...

Is that what the kids are calling it these days?

Chances are that your bike could use lower gears. Bikes aren't marketed for non-athletes that want to efficiently climb Pittsburgh hills.

On some hills, I want my most efficient cadence - at 5 mph. The standard 28F:32R for utility triple rings puts my cadence a little low at that speed.

With a load or a trailer, I want to be comfortable - slightly faster than walking pace.

oh, had another thought. For those who don't mind monotony but don't have trainers, one could always rip an mp3 of an online metronome at the cadence desired, then loop it on an ipod (with only one ear, so as not to loose touch with surroundings). A minute or so would be more than enough, though any delay in track repeating could be enough to throw the cadence, so longer might be better but won't be more interesting.

I apologize if I used the incorrect terminology/verbs, as those skills lie in the semi-luddite aspects of my life, but my husband does it all the time.

http://www.metronomeonline.com/

Alternately you can compute the BPM for your music collection and use tunes you'd rather listen to, instead of tick-tock-tick-tock-... (or the electronic version: tock-tock-tock-...)

After following someone down murray ave the other day, I remembered another argument against mashing. When you mash, you weave. You don't want to be a weaver.

k, so following advice gleaned from above, I went to DH's yesterday to see if there was anything to do about the granny gear situation. They took a look and swapped out my 3 chainwheels with another set that... I think he said the 6 teeth should make a huge difference.

Huge is accurate. I did bottom out of low gears hauling 60# of groceries up Verona rd at the end of the long day, but didn't look for more. kept the feet going at maybe 80-100 rpm, arrivals were less tired, today is less sore. All the gears were useful.

Now why wouldn't they do that to begin with? Or am I just weaker than their target demographic?

Most bikes (like cars) are made to be sold anywhere across the country. So a lot of compromise is built into the "stock" vehicle. So if you lived in Pittsburg, Kansas, you would probably be complaing about the gearing in the opposite direction. BTW, 60# of chow is very impressive!

ah. I always forget about the flat places. That's much easier on the self esteem than personal weakness

The 60# was about half liquids or semi liquids, I can't convince the hubby that condensed/reconstituted anything is worth it. Though I am now going to look up the weight limit to those panniers...

New gearing, eh? Cool! Soooo, how about Rosedale?

Actually, I "did the math" on this issue a few years back, and came to the conclusion that virtually all road bikes are geared WAY too high.

Here's how I worked it:

1. Based on my body weight, bike weight, and the maximum amount of cargo I'd carry, I came up with an all-up weight of 275# (which is a convenient number, BTW).

2. With a carpenter's level, I determined the maximum road gradient I'd occasionally have to deal with as 12.5% (Power's Run coming up from Freeport).

3. I determined the max sustained effort *I'd care to maintain* at 250W, which is almost exactly 1/3 HP.

4. I determined a desired cadence of 80RPM.

So, with these numbers, we know that 1HP is defined as the power necessary to lift 550# one foot in one second. Thus, 1/3 HP would lift 550# 1/3 fps (vertically), OR my 275# 2/3 fps (vertically).

Since we chose a 12.5% gradient, one would go 8 feet across the ground for every 1 foot up, so we'd be doing 5.33fps (or 3.64MPH) up Power's run.

So, we need to determine what "sized wheel" would allow us to maintain 80RPM at 3.64 mph. As is turns out, that would be a *15.3" wheel*...which would require an almost 2:1 reduction on a road bike!

Now, the option for a 2:1 reduction basically doesn't exist, so I go as close as I can, running a 28:32 combo as my "Granny." I like knowing I can "sit-n-spin" my way up (almost) any hill, and I am of the firm opinion that all "commuter/utility" bicycles should be "underdriven in Granny") (i.e. that Granny ought to cause more than one crank revolution for every wheel revolution.)

So I run mountain rears with a triple front.

that's a pretty cool analysis, and i agree wholeheartedly.

even 2:1 is generous for a typical road bike - my lowest gear (30/25) is 32" and that's with a road triple. a typical road double (39T or so) is well over 40" - even with a compact double (34-36T) you're in the high 30s.

i think 30" is tolerable if you're willing to stand and crank for some amount of time, but to haul/sit & spin definitely something more like 22" is much better.

Ah, Rosedale. See, while I respect and understand math and physics of gearing(and am grateful to those here and at DH who are more willing and eager to figure it out than I), some roads are beyond physics and enter the realm of metaphysics. Rosedale is such a road, and as such requires the ephemeral fuel of psychological fortitude to surmount. I'm a chicken.

But I'm a chicken with new gears, a good point. Haven't even tried it yet. Think I'll have a go tonight

When I hit the foot of Steubenville Pike in Crafton, heading into town, there is no gearing in the world that takes away the sick feeling in my stomach knowing that I'm going to have to grind away at that bastard, one way or another. It all becomes mental.

One night last summer biking into town from FedEx I tried an alternate route to climbing that hill out of Crafton. Found myself on Hodgson. Ugh. Whaddyamean, cadence? I couldn't even push my bike up the sidewalk at 80 steps a minute. Or 60. Or 40.

@freakenbike

Good post. I concluded the saem thing about road bikes a few years ago.

For me, I take the optimum lower gear to be one where , if I have to walk, the switch from my lowest gear to walking at 3+ mph is like one mor shift.

Basically, if you can do your efficient pedalling at 4 mph or so, that is about as good as you want to get.

If the hill is that steep, you're not going to be walking at 3mph either

and typically, by the time I give up and get off to walk up a hill I'm wailing at, moving at 3mph via any unassisted mode is difficult. scratch that. moving is difficult. That's when I strategically scope out the view and drink some water, maybe make a phone call or take some pictures. 'cause I MEANT to stop there, yeah.

@lyle If the hill is that steep, you're not going to be walking at 3mph either

You would think. But when I had a bike computer, it said that sometimes I would go as fast as 3.5 mph pushing my bike up a steep hill.

@ejwme Lso following advice gleaned from above, I went to DH's yesterday to see if there was anything to do about the granny gear situation.

... he said the 6 teeth should make a huge difference.

Huge is accurate.

That is so gratifying to hear. As you all know by now, I'm a big proponent that the limiting factorw fopr going up a hill should be you and the hill.

Mick - I'd been thinking I was just not in shape enough, since at first I saw weekly progress in being able to tackle hills in higher and higher gears (or at all). "a poor craftsman blames his tools", but having reached a point of diminishing returns... Your comments made me realize that I'm not going to get stronger if the difficulty keeps me from continuing to increase my participation. it's better to have tools appropriate to my level of ability. I can always modify it back later when I acquire superhuman strength

If anybody's on the fence or doesn't bike because they have difficulty on hills, I highly recommend stopping by your local bike shop and asking about gears. I didn't have to do math, it was cheap and fast, and the physical and psychological difference is indeed huge.

That's all cadence independent, but if mashing gears is the only option, and it's not an enjoyable one...

I ran across http://abundantadventures.com/quads.html

and thought it would be good to post to this thread.

[Edit: I'm having issues with the board accepting my link]