So in the past couple of weeks I’ve been trying different cadences on the bike. I sort of liked pushing higher gears at lower cadence, so this is what I’ve become used to. Well on Sunday we had a training camp, and on the first day we rode 23k to the pool (out of which 20k were downhill), swam, then rode back.
On the way there were flying (29:xx for the 23k). The swim was also good. The way back was hell. There was one really good guy that started setting the pace, and I was toast after 5k. It was pure uphill with varying grades. No flats, no downhills, just pure climbing up the mountain with no rest. Everybody around me is spinning 80-100 rpm, while I’m stuck trying to overpower the hill with high gears. This usually works for short hills, but for ones like this it was suicide.
On the second day we rode around for around 30k, then started a LT test (with pricking and blood). It was 4x3k. Mostly flat with one short very steep climb at around the 1k mark. The coach told us to maintain a high cadence (100+), so this is what I had to do. Part of the reason I don’t use ‘granny gears’ is because when I shift to my 25 or 27 the der rubs the spokes. Well on that climb I shifted to that gear because that hill was a fucking wall. And lucky me, my chain fell. Not wanting to stop, I geared up a chainring in order to get it back on the 39. Well it over-shifted and got on my 52. I guess the angle between the 27 and 52 was too big and the der got stuck in the spokes and I came to a dead stop. I almost flew off the bike, and my test was over.
Now my der is broken, and I learned that high cadence > low cadence.