No pun intended but I’m training for the Fred Whitton road event in May,

I have a Planet X kaffenback and I love it but the gearing means that on the local hills I am outgeared and only managing to get up the steepest at a slow pace and with lots of effort.

Obviously I will be restructuring the gearing for the bigger Lake District hills but is it more beneficial to train with the tougher set up I have at the moment or should I change now?

the secret of Lance Armstrong’s success was low gearing

… or something

spin to win – high cadence your fast muscle tires less. Also technique try pushing down through your heal. Get fitter

Power is power whatever the cadence. But if you suspect you’ll be struggling with a low cadence over the very steep Lakeland passes then it maybe an idea to prepare for these type of conditions.

If it were me I’d change sooner rather than later just be sure you get on with it.

A knee injury has stopped me pushing big gears but with a little time I’m no slower and have better endurance
Since I stopped trying to mash big cog everywhere

What setup do you have now?

Agree; power (work done) is a function of effort and time so spin speed (cadence) is not directly related

I was pretty sure that you recover faster from a low geared high cadence run of identical speed to a high geared grunt-fest… And obviously with less chance of injury. I guess that some building up of resistance slowly over time (introducing higher gearing while aiming for same cadence) is probably a good thing for endurance and outright power building.

Tbh, thinking about it now, I don’t really see it’s functionally different from weight training – you always go for lots of sets with slow build up of weight rather than trying to lift the whole gym unless you want injuries.

On the Lance thing (leaving the obvious alone) I understand he was so obsessed with higher cadences that he was defying conventional thinking on crank length and shortening those to up the spin even further..

Thanks to a bike malfunction I trained a lot of this winter on a heavy bike with a 42×23 bottom gear (I live in an area not dissimilar to the Lakes). When I got back on lower gears I thought I’d be flying, but it hasn’t worked out that way 😳 I’m better at climbing out of the saddle than I was, but no faster.

As the poster above says, change now and work on your spin.

FWIW mix up long steady rides with a few sets of interval training rides to get the biggest return on investment of time

Wiggins seems to favour spinning too. I find sometimes a big gear works on a hill, other times a lower gear works, depends on me, the hill, and my goal for that ride.

All I know is: When I find the RIGHT gear, it seems to all click.

Superb.. Will get this sorted ASAP.

I’ve no Idea without looking ( wet outside) what my set up is.

Any suggestions for gearing range needed.?

Depends what you’ve got now, a compact with a 25 at the back is fine.

I’ve been up Hardknott with 39/25 and 34/28 and its bastarding hard whatever the gears. Only difference with the 34/28 was that i could keep the pedals turning slowly and prolong the pain enough to get up.

Only way i’d be able to spin up it would be to do it on my mountain bike

Sounds like a job for SRAM’s WiFli

Hardknott appears to be the killer for sure!

Rule 5

For me it’s about the muscle group you engage. Yes you can grind up slowly and physics tells us it takes the same amount of power. But you have two sorts of muscles. Fast and slow. Depending on the race depends on what’s best to use. Technique also plays a part. MTB off road favours sat down weight over rear wheel for traction. Road you can stand and pedal. Sat Dow I spin. Standing I favour higher gear low cadence. Think the point is I vary technique to suit what I’m trying to achieve.

For me it’s about the muscle group you engage. Yes you can grind up slowly and physics tells us it takes the same amount of power. But you have two sorts of muscles. Fast and slow. Depending on the race depends on what’s best to use. Technique also plays a part. MTB off road favours sat down weight over rear wheel for traction. Road you can stand and pedal. Sat Dow I spin. Standing I favour higher gear low cadence. Think the point is I vary technique to suit what I’m trying to achieve.

I’ve ridden Hardknott or Wrynose a few times and I’ve yet to see anyone sit and spin their way up on a road bike. Hardknott especially is really steep in places and it’s all about having the strength to get out of the saddle and keep your forward momentum. I think doing some standing climbing pushing a big gear at low cadence would be good training for it.

I have no idea about road kit..

Been told that for the money and the fact that it will be a one off event – to fit a compact tiagra set up…£140 fitted?

Sound ok ?

Sounds expensive, unless you don’t have the tools or the know how to do it yourself.

Have a nearly new fsa compact cset 4 sale, email in profile if up want more info

Sorry but power is a function of cadence(or pedal rpm). Power is torque (or the effort you put in through your legs) multiplied by cadence (pedal rpm). However this is not a physics problem, it is a chemistry problem. The answer is that it depends on your own body chemistry, high cadence will work for some, and not for others, You can train to improve your fast and/or slow cadence performance, but ultimately it is a similar thing to sprinters vs marathon runners in regards to fast and slow twitch muscle fibres, you will be genetically pre-disposed to one or the other.

34:28 for me and Hardknott is still very, very tough, especially with a few miles in your legs.

I think there may be some value in trying to fight your way up hills in a gear that’s much too hard as training, not so much for your legs, but for the rest of your body. I normally find that it’s my back and arms that are aching most after Hardknott & Wrynose.

I live in the area and am doing the fred again this year ive got 11-28 gear casettes on both my road bikes its a perfect ratio for around here imo but even then im standing going up hardknott with 100 miles in the legs 😉

ps How is everyone else getting on with training for this event? im a month behind on last year due to this crappy weather!