Most multisport athletes tend to have a lower average cadence than a your typical roadie. So, when you’ve got 30/30s or minute/minutes, and you’re in erg mode, do you just grind through the VO2 max interval or do you follow workout recommendations and spin faster?
Where I live, a typical ride is flat as a pancake with your occasional overpass. Those bridges are 30 second climbs tops. I’m starting to think I’d get more out of indoor sessions if I held my slower cadence and muscled through the higher wattages rather than spin faster…but then is it really a VO2 Max session.
What do others riding their tri bikes on the trainer do?
My most comfortable cadence is right around 92-93 rpm. I don’t know if you consider that slow or fast. I ride a dumb trainer so I just try to match my gearing and cadence to the power target as best as I can.
I’m not a multi sport athlete, but when I am really at the limit, I prefer to have a slightly lower preferred cadence than at things like sweet spot or threshold intervals.
IMHO you should do the intervals at whatever cadence you prefer to do them. A higher cadence will shift the burden more towards your cardiovascular system, a lower cadence more to your muscles. In my case I found out that to eek out the last percentage or three, I need to rely more on my leg muscle strength as my cardio vascular system was maxed out already.
