Simple Solution needed to measuring Cadence

Damianjsmith

Hi,

1st post so please be gentle

As a Roadie Newbie I am just starting to get in to indoor training. The first thing I need to work out is a easy way of measuring cadence.

My Initial thoughts were,
Can you use a Ant+ sensor and then link either to an android phone or laptop.

I have a Garmin 200 so don't really want to go down a 2nd mounted computer or replace the garmin.

Any thoughts or advise greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Damian

amaferanga

Sell the Edge 200 and get an Edge 500 instead. Why did you buy an Edge 200 anyway? :?

Or you could buy a Garmin GSC-10 speed/cadence sensor and run Golden Cheetah in realtime mode, but that seems like a lot of hassle just to get cadence. Some Sony Ericsson phones are apparently ANT+ ready, but as far as I'm aware there's not an app available yet.

moonshine

Garmin 500 with Ant+ Cadence sensor or a Powertap / SRM
or a separate Cateye Strada Cadence (either wired or wireless) http://www.wiggle.co.uk/cateye-strada-c ... -computer/ can't be more helpful i'm afraid - the Cateye is good - I have had the wired ones on my bikes before going to Garmin 500 with Powertap.

dgstewart

It doesn't get any simpler than counting, but maybe you want something slightly higher tech?

Seriously, though, I don't have any form of cadence measurement on my bikes or turbo, but I know what 100 rpm feels like well enough. On the turbo I'll do a 15 sec or 30 sec count near the start of an interval, then assuming HR is at the right level for a given session/interval/etc I just stay in the same gear and go by HR, with the occasional cadence count just to check. It gives you something else to focus on too, when the turbo is getting too dull.

Damianjsmith

amaferanga wrote:

Sell the Edge 200 and get an Edge 500 instead. Why did you buy an Edge 200 anyway? :?


Thats what I have been saying to my self the last few weeks.

I got the Edge 200 for my mountain bikes, then sold my hardtail and bought a road bike a month ago.
Never taken turbo training seriously untill now!!

Damianjsmith

Its looking like the only option is to put a standalone traning computer on the road bike. The keep the Edge for days out.

£30 against £100+ to swop the garmin.

Or just keep counting

Thanks for the help

Damian

moonshine

dgstewart wrote:

It doesn't get any simpler than counting, but maybe you want something slightly higher tech?

I'm normally going so hard on the Turbo that i go cross eyed and there is no way i could count! :oops:

SBezza

Or don't worry too much about it and cycle at a cadence that is comfortable for you. Once you have been cycling for a while you will probably end up doing similar cadence on the turbo anyhow, as that is what feels natural to you.

Unless you have a real slow cadence going from 90 to 100 for example is not going to make you a better cyclist, only developing more power will do this.

LightningTony

Am confused by your post SBezza? Power is a combination of what gear you are in and how fast you are pedalling, assuming all other factors are constant, which they will be on a turbo. 91 revs will be 1.11% more powerful than 90 revs, or to make the sums even easier, 110 revs will be 10% more powerful than 100 revs for the same person on the same gear on the same turbo. If you know of any different way of developing power please share it with us.

cougie

Counting for 20 secs and multiplying by 3 is good enough. Note your speed - so if you dont change gear - you know that if you keep that speed up - then you're doing xx mph.

nhoj

SBezza is talking about upping the cadence at the same speed, not in the same gear. Of course, if you up the cadence in the same gear, you're giving out more power.

Barbarossa

Music? Choose some tunes with the right tempo and pedal along!

Tom Dean

LightningTony wrote:

Am confused by your post SBezza? Power is a combination of what gear you are in and how fast you are pedalling, assuming all other factors are constant, which they will be on a turbo. 91 revs will be 1.11% more powerful than 90 revs, or to make the sums even easier, 110 revs will be 10% more powerful than 100 revs for the same person on the same gear on the same turbo. If you know of any different way of developing power please share it with us.

Speed is a combination of what gear you are in and how fast you are pedalling. You are assuming a linear relationship between speed and power, which is not the case for most turbos.

rolf_f

You could get a really cheap computer, put the magnet on the crank and calculate what wheel diameter corresponds to cadence. You just need to be sure that you can put any wheel size in because it won't be a standard one! That would cut the bill to around a tenner.

Edit - the calc isn't that hard - if you imagine cycling at a cadence of 100, you need the computer to think you are doing 100 mph. You could actually probably do it by trial and error.

Zachariah

The music solution I've found is the best (short of getting a computer with cadence). For example, go to a well-known search engine and type "180bpm mp3 download" (I like the podrunner ones, nice and long).

Play it to yourself while riding. Pedal until you're doing one rev every other beat (or one foot down every beat). Presto, you're doing exactly 90rpm! Adjust music accordingly for different numbers.

nhoj

What you need to sing to yourself is "Tiens, voilà du boudin", the marching song of the French Foreign Legion, famous for its 88 steps a minute. Eighty-eight miles per hour, Marty! T'is the magic number.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Boudin

davebc

nhoj wrote:

What you need to sing to yourself is "Tiens, voilà du boudin", the marching song of the French Foreign Legion, famous for its 88 steps a minute. Eighty-eight miles per hour, Marty! T'is the magic number.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Boudin

And if you can cycle and sing this out loud on a high gear - I salute you lol

SBezza

LightningTony wrote:

Am confused by your post SBezza? Power is a combination of what gear you are in and how fast you are pedalling, assuming all other factors are constant, which they will be on a turbo. 91 revs will be 1.11% more powerful than 90 revs, or to make the sums even easier, 110 revs will be 10% more powerful than 100 revs for the same person on the same gear on the same turbo. If you know of any different way of developing power please share it with us.

As mentioned by other people, if you are putting out 250 watts the speed you pedal at makes very little difference, 250 watts is 250 watts. Now obviously if you want to put out more power, you simply up the cadence or up the gear whilst keeping the same cadence.

And as such cadence doesn't matter much, you will fluctuate any how, mine goes from 85 all the way to 105+ on the turbo, depending on how I feel, sometimes change gear for a break etc, or by actually looking at a power file you will see the cadence is generally all over the shop and so is power, it is only averaging that makes it look smoother than it is.

LightningTony

SBezza wrote:

LightningTony wrote:

Am confused by your post SBezza? Power is a combination of what gear you are in and how fast you are pedalling, assuming all other factors are constant, which they will be on a turbo. 91 revs will be 1.11% more powerful than 90 revs, or to make the sums even easier, 110 revs will be 10% more powerful than 100 revs for the same person on the same gear on the same turbo. If you know of any different way of developing power please share it with us.

As mentioned by other people, if you are putting out 250 watts the speed you pedal at makes very little difference, 250 watts is 250 watts. Now obviously if you want to put out more power, you simply up the cadence or up the gear whilst keeping the same cadence.

And as such cadence doesn't matter much, you will fluctuate any how, mine goes from 85 all the way to 105+ on the turbo, depending on how I feel, sometimes change gear for a break etc, or by actually looking at a power file you will see the cadence is generally all over the shop and so is power, it is only averaging that makes it look smoother than it is.

I still don't get it Father Ted! If you are putting out 250 watts it is only because that is the speed you are pedalling at, change the pedalling speed and you change the watts, pure and simple (for a given gear selection, obviously). The reason this is important is because changing gear would make too big a change, whereas concentrating on pedalling say 3 revs per minute faster over the course of a 30 minute training session would see a significant increase in performance. Having that instant feedback on cadence, ideally also with feedback on the average cadence, will give the individual something to concentrate on. You cant concentrate on power, only on pedalling. All top athletes now talk about focussing on the process, for runners it is foot strides per minute, for us it is pedal revs. Powermeters are a relatively new method of converting our cadence into something to talk about, but the bottom line is if you want to improve you have to learn to pedal faster until such time as you can up the gear, which will slow your cadence, and then start working on that new gear to up the cadence, until you find your optimum.

Maybe we are talking about different training scenarios here> If you are doing interval sessions with sprints and rest periods, and monitoring your power over the course of a session then maybe you only care about the overall power and not what the breakdown of cadence was; you could seek improvements by reducing the rest intervals and increasing the sprint intervals, or both. However at some point you will still need to pedal faster to improve.

sub55

LightningTony wrote:

SBezza wrote:

LightningTony wrote:

Am confused by your post SBezza? Power is a combination of what gear you are in and how fast you are pedalling, assuming all other factors are constant, which they will be on a turbo. 91 revs will be 1.11% more powerful than 90 revs, or to make the sums even easier, 110 revs will be 10% more powerful than 100 revs for the same person on the same gear on the same turbo. If you know of any different way of developing power please share it with us.

As mentioned by other people, if you are putting out 250 watts the speed you pedal at makes very little difference, 250 watts is 250 watts. Now obviously if you want to put out more power, you simply up the cadence or up the gear whilst keeping the same cadence.

And as such cadence doesn't matter much, you will fluctuate any how, mine goes from 85 all the way to 105+ on the turbo, depending on how I feel, sometimes change gear for a break etc, or by actually looking at a power file you will see the cadence is generally all over the shop and so is power, it is only averaging that makes it look smoother than it is.

I still don't get it Father Ted! If you are putting out 250 watts it is only because that is the speed you are pedalling at, change the pedalling speed and you change the watts, pure and simple (for a given gear selection, obviously). The reason this is important is because changing gear would make too big a change, whereas concentrating on pedalling say 3 revs per minute faster over the course of a 30 minute training session would see a significant increase in performance. Having that instant feedback on cadence, ideally also with feedback on the average cadence, will give the individual something to concentrate on. You cant concentrate on power, only on pedalling. All top athletes now talk about focussing on the process, for runners it is foot strides per minute, for us it is pedal revs. Powermeters are a relatively new method of converting our cadence into something to talk about, but the bottom line is if you want to improve you have to learn to pedal faster until such time as you can up the gear, which will slow your cadence, and then start working on that new gear to up the cadence, until you find your optimum.

Maybe we are talking about different training scenarios here> If you are doing interval sessions with sprints and rest periods, and monitoring your power over the course of a session then maybe you only care about the overall power and not what the breakdown of cadence was; you could seek improvements by reducing the rest intervals and increasing the sprint intervals, or both. However at some point you will still need to pedal faster to improve.

:roll: I should make sure you know who your talking too , before you suggest to them that what they are doing is wrong and they would go better by doing it your way.