100 quid vs 2 grand bike

Riding an old Italian bike quite frequently I too am surprised at the climbing results. Although to be fair a large part of mine is probably getting used to friction shifters again, so stay in a gear for longer than is optimal where I would change on my modern bike.

Did you go up the climb on both bikes in an identical gear?

I find I can (I appreciate this is not rocket science) push a bigger gear for the same watts, lower cadence and lower hr, for reasonably longer periods of time, as it shifts from cardio more to muscular load.

If you are able to sit in the same gear inchage (made up word) for both bikes, then that would be ideal, although I thought you mentioned that in the video, so I may be barking up the wrong tree.

Just my ha'penny worth on high gear, low cadence. It works but has diminishing returns. On a long ride, or multiple climbs there is a cross-over where low gear, high cadence starts to pay dividends. Well that's my experience anyway.

Yes totally agree on that one, I'm definitely more likely to be able to ride longer at a higher cadence than, for the same duration at a lower one.

I used to have a very low cadence, something around 70-75, but when I started Trainerroad that moved me up slowly to around 90, which is a good cadence. If I am really pushing on a 1-2 hour ride, and self select my cadence, I find it tends to end up at around 78-82.

The other bonus for me with low cadence, as someone with a naturally high HR, is that I can ride at the same power, but with a lower HR. My plan is to experiment with different cadences whilst out on rides in the future, so start light and spinny for maybe the first hour at around 90, and then if I start to feel I am 'blowing' a bit, lower the cadence and tax the muscles more - I'll be interested to see what that yields power output wise.

I'm already doing it on Turbo sessions, cadence changes 90/80/70/60 etc etc

I thought the "science" on this sort of thing had essentially debunked the idea that higher cadence was better.

I suspect mostly what you see are differences in adaptation. i.e. if you train for higher cadence seated climbing, you are going to be slower with longer gears than if that's how you normally ride.

It isn't comparing like with like.

I understand that the science behind cadence and fatigue is that riding at a higher cadence takes away some of the stress from the legs and puts more stress onto the heart. Leg muscles will tire after time, but the heart muscle has evolved to not tire.

There are few climbs in the UK that take me more than 20 minutes, there are some really long ascents at a low gradient or where the climb is broken up with flat or downhill sections, but 20 minutes is about the maximum for a continuous sustained climb. A lower cadence will probably give better results in that time frame, it will be a different matter where climbs exceed an hour or even 2 hours.

This is the argument, but it does not reflect the science, or common sense to be frank.

Do you really think the riders climbing with a 39x21 back in the 80s were at a lower heart rate?

Of course they weren't.

I did a session on Trainerroad once. I've not maintained the subscription so I can't access the data, but as far as I remember it involved decreasing your power by 5% every minute and increasing your cadence 5% at the same time, then after 5 minutes you reversed the process, increasing power and decreasing cadence. . The graph of power and hr vs time was very interesting, as the power went down my hr went up and vice versa.

I think there is something in the theory.