The following advice about low-cadence triathlon cycling was written by a coach. It seems atypical. Your thoughts appreciated.
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Cycling for Triathlon
Cycling is no doubt the sport where athletes keep making mistakes, starting with improper bike fitting and finishing with over-distance training. I will leave the bike fitting issue for some other time and focus solely on training for now.
As you probably know, cycling is the least skilled sport of all three and for triathlon it is more about strength than skills. Unless you're racing in a draft legal race (ITU), you don't need to focus on acceleration, speed, group riding skills or spending time doing drills (ie. single leg drills). Instead, the focus for cycling is about developing strength and lactate tolerance. Most age group athletes have limited time to train on the bike, usually 2 or 3 times per week, so it's important to make each session count!
In triathlon, the bike is all about arriving at the start of the run in control, without having accumulated overt amounts of aerobic fatigue, having worked the legs in a way that accommodates cycling fatigue without generating run fatigue. It is from this “don’t tax the run muscles” perspective that you can best understand how triathlon cycling is not the same as the sport of cycling.
In cycling, higher cadences are used to distribute an amount of work that has to be done (the wattage) into more “pieces.” Without getting into the specifics of why cycling differs from triathlon cycling other than to point out that bike races take place at much higher power outputs than triathlon cycling (in athletes of similar fitness), the price of higher cadence is higher aerobic stress and hence also greater glycogen consumption, which in cycling can be tolerated since there is no following run. The benefit of a higher cadence is that the workload on the muscles is spread out and the stress of each contraction is less forceful.
In short, high cadence saves muscles at the cost of greater aerobic stress: “Optimum cadence” is the point at which price balances benefit. As a triathlete, you are training to run after the cycling portion. But running on tired legs is much like cycling at high power outputs: The legs are already weakened, and the scarcest resource is a rested muscle. Attempting to run with a more forceful, longer stride rate in a triathlon will quickly lead to disappointment – the tired legs have nothing left to give. So just as a cyclist needs to increase cadence when working at effort levels at which the leg muscles begin to be significantly stressed, so too does a triathlete need to increase running stride rate to preserve the run muscles.
This implies that running will need to draw on fast "Firing" of the muscles if the runner is to run at a high stride rate – which in turn implies that in a triathlon the athlete needs to preserve these muscle "Firing" until the run begins.
In conclusion, the most effective cycling style for triathlon is to “grind” it out in a big gear rather than adopting a higher cadence because low cadence cycling against a higher resistance:
• Fatigues fast twitch muscle fibers while preserving slow twitch fibers
• Caps heart rate due to the slow contractions and high resistance
• Consequently conserves glycogen stores and draws more on fat as a fuel source
Start thinking like a triathlete and race fast this season!
************
Cycling for Triathlon
Cycling is no doubt the sport where athletes keep making mistakes, starting with improper bike fitting and finishing with over-distance training. I will leave the bike fitting issue for some other time and focus solely on training for now.
As you probably know, cycling is the least skilled sport of all three and for triathlon it is more about strength than skills. Unless you're racing in a draft legal race (ITU), you don't need to focus on acceleration, speed, group riding skills or spending time doing drills (ie. single leg drills). Instead, the focus for cycling is about developing strength and lactate tolerance. Most age group athletes have limited time to train on the bike, usually 2 or 3 times per week, so it's important to make each session count!
In triathlon, the bike is all about arriving at the start of the run in control, without having accumulated overt amounts of aerobic fatigue, having worked the legs in a way that accommodates cycling fatigue without generating run fatigue. It is from this “don’t tax the run muscles” perspective that you can best understand how triathlon cycling is not the same as the sport of cycling.
In cycling, higher cadences are used to distribute an amount of work that has to be done (the wattage) into more “pieces.” Without getting into the specifics of why cycling differs from triathlon cycling other than to point out that bike races take place at much higher power outputs than triathlon cycling (in athletes of similar fitness), the price of higher cadence is higher aerobic stress and hence also greater glycogen consumption, which in cycling can be tolerated since there is no following run. The benefit of a higher cadence is that the workload on the muscles is spread out and the stress of each contraction is less forceful.
In short, high cadence saves muscles at the cost of greater aerobic stress: “Optimum cadence” is the point at which price balances benefit. As a triathlete, you are training to run after the cycling portion. But running on tired legs is much like cycling at high power outputs: The legs are already weakened, and the scarcest resource is a rested muscle. Attempting to run with a more forceful, longer stride rate in a triathlon will quickly lead to disappointment – the tired legs have nothing left to give. So just as a cyclist needs to increase cadence when working at effort levels at which the leg muscles begin to be significantly stressed, so too does a triathlete need to increase running stride rate to preserve the run muscles.
This implies that running will need to draw on fast "Firing" of the muscles if the runner is to run at a high stride rate – which in turn implies that in a triathlon the athlete needs to preserve these muscle "Firing" until the run begins.
In conclusion, the most effective cycling style for triathlon is to “grind” it out in a big gear rather than adopting a higher cadence because low cadence cycling against a higher resistance:
• Fatigues fast twitch muscle fibers while preserving slow twitch fibers
• Caps heart rate due to the slow contractions and high resistance
• Consequently conserves glycogen stores and draws more on fat as a fuel source
Start thinking like a triathlete and race fast this season!