Today was inside riding with the goal of improving cadence.  Nothing too exciting, but increasing cadence is a serious challenge that I feel needs work.  While riding outside the other day, I tried to just go as normal, as if I was riding normal cranks.  This led to some good spinning cadences, which is amazing because they warn in the PC instruction manual that it's hard to do higher cadences until progress is made over months.  However, the zeal of increased cadence had its limit as when reaching about the 40' mark I hadn't turned around yet, and knew that the pedal stroke was getting tired.  I really started to feel like Hanzel and Gretl hoping that I can follow my trail back home.  Luckily it's slightly downhill on the way home, so I felt comfortable coasting here and there in between trying to revive the spinning.  I was trying to think, "how is it possible that I can normally go out and spin for hours?"  It just goes to show how much laziness there is in the pedal stroke that has been trained via normal cranks.  It's amazing how we can even pedal a bike while having such untrained muscles!  I don't have a computrainer, but I would guess that the improvements from riding PCs could be documented with having folks ride on the computrainer doing a series of tests and using their pedal stroke analysis.  While there are other ways to train these parts of pedaling, again, it comes down to efficiency--what will reap benefits in a reasonable or the shortest amount of time.  While some may debate as to whether or not PCs are the most efficient way to make these improvements, there is no debate that PCs are definitely a very efficient way to improve and strengthen your pedal stroke.


T=80' avgP=112 avgRPM=68 CP5’=155