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Base Training – Long Steady Distance Riding
Firstly many thanks to Andrew Costello for sending me the following link:

http://www.rapha.cc/winter-training/?cm_mmc=email-_-301111-_-img-_-wintertraining

It underwrites a lot of the principals that we need to adhere to make our winter base training a solid foundation for our season. I have also received similar advice from an old pro (Keith Butler) who was ride leader on a winter training camp I attended some years ago. The key point for those January rides is one of Long Steady Distance which we will kick off at our first ride in January. On that training camp some years ago Keith was watching me mash a massive gear on the first ride of the week, for the rest of the week he banned me from using the outer chainring as we were there to turn the pedals for a long time not to push big gears. I can certainly attest to the fact that I got a better training benefit from the camp and coped with the longer rides better. Therefore, I am suggesting that this will be a good thought to have for our January rides.
With the mainstream adoption of compact chainsets I was wondering if the gearing of modern bikes will make it impossible to do a long ride on the inner ring. On the assumption that we will not use the smallest sprocket on the inner ring a cadence of 90RPM should enable us to have enough speed to do the Long Steady Distance rides in January at a suitable pace. Perhaps only using the large chainring where we need that control on certain descents. Now would be a good time to practice riding on the inner ring as we prepare for base training in January.
Please try it and let me know how you get on.
The table below shows the speed in MPH that a 90 RPM cadence generates. If you ever want to find information on gears the first stop is the late Sheldon Brown’s page:

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/gears/

Inner chainring
Sprocket 39 36 34
12 22.9 21.1 19.9
13 21.1 19.5 18.4
14 19.6 18.1 17.1
15 18.3 16.9 15.9
16 17.2 15.8 15.0
17 16.1 14.9 14.1
19 14.4 13.3 12.6
21 13.1 12.1 11.4
23 11.9 11.0 10.4
25 11.0 10.1 9.6

So if this doesn’t match your gears put in your own figures so you can work your own out.