I’m also a MTB-er and I engaged various Forum members on this topic.
My takeaway from the feedback is as follows:
- It’s good to work to expand the cadence range
- It’s good to ensure that appropriate portion of the effort is at lower cadences if your training objectives are specific to MTB riding/climbs/deployment of torque
- Interval training offers a good opportunity to alternate cadences between intervals (I got into a habit of determining the cadence strategy per interval before each workout)4
- If you to the Ramp Test in a cadence range that is comfortable for you but substantially outside of the cadence range recommended for the workouts you might struggle initially with sustained sweet spot workouts. This is addressable with persistence.
What I haven’t figured out yet is how to stop doing item 3 above in an arbitrary manner. Some structure there (@Jonathan?) would be useful so that the relative focus on muscle strength and aero endurance doesn’t create or sustain an imbalance. It may be that each workout shouldn’t try to address too broad a range of fitness objectives, but in my view this would demand that either 1) more workouts are built into Base training that focus on low cadence work, or 2) there is a MTB Base option.
LtS