The myth of climbing at 100rpm is ruining your endurance rides

Don’t we all want to ride like our favourite pro riders? After all, they are the best. One myth about riding that grew throughout the Lance Armstrong years was the idea that riders should climb at a high cadence. It worked for him, why not for us?

To understand the challenge with riding a climb at a high cadence let’s take a look at our wattage equation.

Power = Torque x Cadence.

The equation tells us that as we increase our cadence the power will go up. Or conversely to do a high cadence while climbing we need a lot of power. This wasn’t a problem for Armstrong. But for the rest of us it is a challenge.

Endurance rides

Where this idea of a high cadence on climbs becomes problematic is on endurance rides. Our endurance rides are about fat burning and maintaining a fairly constant wattage. Keeping our wattage constant allows us to stay in our fat burning zone, not turn on the sugar burning system.

If you are a rider that rides at a high cadence up the climbs, you are not able to do an endurance ride properly. Because to ride that high cadence you have to push more wattage, you will always be turning on your sugar burning system - and it doesn’t just turn off when you go easy, which is negating the point of the endurance ride.

Part of the problem for riders is that they are not used to riding with their legs under tension - they have no ability to ride across a wide cadence range. Training with Sans Chaine you will experience the full cadence range and that will help in this respect. You will become comfortable with feeling your legs under tension.

Riding with friends

The other area of our riding that the 100rpm myth affects is our ability to not half-wheel our friends when out riding. If every time you come to a climb you are trying to keep your cadence stable, and high, then each climb becomes like a mini, slow speed, attack. Suddenly, to keep up, your riding partner also has to put out more wattage.

One thing we want to work towards in our Sans Chaine riding is the idea that we are riding with others and not always dictating the pace. Letting your legs come under tension as you climb will allow you to control your pace and keep your wattage in check. There won’t be a need for the other riders to surge with you, nor for them to feel like you are half-wheeling them.

100rpm may have worked for Lance. And it may work for you in a race situation. But when we are doing endurance, or riding two-by-two with our friends, let your legs come under tension on the climb. It will be a better training and riding experience.