Cadence: Trainer vs. Road

Manweiser said:

I comfortably maintain a cadence of 90 rpm on the trainer, but when riding on the road, I find my cadence to fall around 75 rpm. Is this typical? Should my trainer cadence be closer to my real world cadence?

Thanks in advance.

Cadence on the road, much like power and speed will differ from the trainer. Depending on the landscape of your route, hilly, flat, rolling, all of your variables will change. Also it depends on the gearing you choose. On the trainer, you might have the resistance much lower, so you would spin with more ease, having a higher cadence as a result.

Also, on the trainer you're not pulling your weight, while on the road you do.

Even a small incline on the road will affect your cadence, along with wind factor as well. If you're getting a strong headwind, you will have a tougher time spinning those pedals.

Good info above. But if you want to get the road cadence up, just drop the gear and spin faster. It is often hard (again see above) due to rolling terrain, but that is what practice and training rides are all about.

FWIW, I've done long, long periods of all trainer training as well as purely outdoors. I find that the longer, more often I'm on the trainer, the more cadence drops. A general estimate would be a drop in cadence of about 10-15 rpm for the very same sessions. For example, I've seen an avg cadence of < 70 rpms during some grueling 2 x 20 indoor sessions but would never experience that outdoors. I've seen a lot of anecdotal evidence of many others experiencing very similar patterns. Yet once I start riding outdoors mostly, the trend switches to higher cadence.

Personally I don't care about cadence for the most part, especially in an off-season build period, and focus on power.

TKOS said:

Good info above. But if you want to get the road cadence up, just drop the gear and spin faster. It is often hard (again see above) due to rolling terrain, but that is what practice and training rides are all about.

dead-on
+1