Cadence on touring bikes

[VanessaPerthshire]

As with all the comments above I don't use cadence anymore for touring

How did your first tour go?
I was hoping to do a 3 day tour last week, the North East 250, but weather was dreadful so postponed it.

 

[CXRAndy]

Touring is fun and relaxing. You can use the data for some of the ride as a little training, when you hit boring sections

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Plan your tours so you are not pushing darkness every day. A sensible distance you know you can cover with time for site seeing, pubs, and taking in the view. No need for average speed, cadence, HR, power output. Just enjoy the gentle pace of touring for the days you are away. We spend far too much time rushing around these days, touring is a nice antidote to modern life.

 

[John Peel]

Yep, a nice early start around 7am, then about 5 hours of cycling. Then it's wash clothes and shower, sort gear out, grab an hours nap, eat some food, then flake out proper. Pretty much sums up my tour.

 

[Blue Hills]

Yep, a nice early start around 7am, then about 5 hours of cycling. Then it's wash clothes and shower, sort gear out, grab an hours nap, eat some food, then flake out proper. Pretty much sums up my tour.

Excellent idea. I tend to get up a bit too late to accomodate my morning's faffing .leave quite late, pedal quite late, sit in camp with a bottle or two, which then doesn't help an early start the next day. I hereby resolve to use your system and to be finished pedalling by 4 or 5 at the latest.

 

[Edwardoka]

I think the only time I saw 7am on tour was when I got off the ferry. I tended to stay in the tent reading until it became unbearably hot, then rode until I either reached a hotel found a likely looking camping spot late in the evening. My latest day ended at about 2am but I was regularly sneaking into campsites well after midnight. (I always paid, before you ask)

If I were doing it over I'd be less relaxed about certain aspects of touring (leaving my bike unlocked outside a supermarket...) and more relaxed about others.
The pressure I felt to keep moving stopped me from taking detours to see cool things, or doing research into local attractions meaning that I missed many awesome things without ever realising. Seeing Montserrat in the distance and instead of it occurring to me "I should totally cycle there" my brain defaulted to "must keep cycling eastward"

 

[PK99]

No it is arbitrary. The science shows that cyclists have a range of optimal cadences, indeed a number of different studies have found wide variations in the determined optimum cadence - Coast & Welch, 1985 , 90–105 rpm; Eckermann & Millahn, 1967, 30–60 rpm; Hagberg, Mullin, Giese, & Spitznagel, 1981, 80–90 rpm; Wildrick, Freedson, & Hamill, 1992, 35–57 rpm for example.

The optimal cadence for any particular rider varies depending on a number of biomechanical differences, and also on what optimisation you are looking for. Foss & Halen found in 2004 that the optimum cadence for the same person increases the greater the amount of work required by the cyclist, therefore a touring cyclist on that measure could well expect to have a lower optimum cadence than a pro racer, simply because cycle touring is normally a lower power pursuit.

I do find it rather annoying to see people blindly quote values like this without understanding the mechanisms behind the calculations, and what the experiments they were derived from were trying to test.

You mean it has about as much validity as 220-age for heartrate!