Keep on spinning

I was watching the highlights of yesterdays stage of the Tour De France on Eurosport today. During a particular quite part of the race the motorcycle camera man did a nice, low shot of the cranks on a bunch of bikes. It was interesting to see how many had cadence sensors. That got me thinking about the benefits of getting one for training, when I remembered I already have one! It came with my Garmin 305 but I never fitted it to the mountain bikes (obviously).

So, when I got back from work today, I fitted it (which was a doddle) and heading of on a 60 min spin. Now all I need to do is make sense of the cadence data! There is an interesting article here. Knowing what cadence you are comfortable cycling in won't win you races, but it is another value you can use during training. The average cadence for the spin I did was 72 rpm. While I was trying to take it easy (National Champs on Sunday and all that), its a value I can look to improve on. In a real training session, I need to be looking at 88 to 95+ rpm.

Apart from that little distraction, its been a quite few days. Been off all the bikes, trying to just relax and build up energy for the race. Tomorrow is the preride. Lots of interesting talk about the course. Its designed to encourage close racing, and they have some nasty techie stuff - which is the bit that worries me!