Twitch and shout#

Mon, 23 Jan 2006 12:00:00 +0000

There was a thread on Serpentine Road today about Using a rockered setup to go faster, in which the consensus wisdom seems to be that you don't - or at least, that the usual speedskating technique is about longer and slower strides and getting more push through each, which rockering is not going to help with if it just makes the frame more likely to squirrel around when pushed.

But it got me to thinking about cadence in general, and remembering how surprised I was when I found out that in cycling, higher cadence is better (gross oversimplification, but most untrained cyclists have a tendency to mash the gears because it "feels more powerful" instead of spinning). At a cadence of around 90rpm, the cyclist is not putting as much force into each stroke as he would be for the same speed at 60rpm, so is recruiting fewer muscle fibres, and it's the slow-twitch fibres that get used first. They don't fatigue easily, recover quickly, and can run on fat instead of eating into precious glycogen stores - result, you can go on for ever. So, question to the gallery: how does one determine whether a skating stroke is pushing hard enough to also use the (precious, easily-fatigued) fast-twitch fibres and what can you do about it if so? And, perhaps just as importantly, what am I doing to my knees?

Well, actually, I can answer that last question easily enough. I'm prodding gingerly at the left one and comparing it to the one on the right to see how much it's swollen. While swerving to avoid someone on the Stroll yesterday I clipped the tyre of a parked car with my front wheel, and executed some sort of graceless spinning fall that left me with skin loss from left elbow and knee, plus a developing bruise on my hip. Another day of public transport to work, yippee. But on the bright side, my ankles were fine for yesterday's 26km plus video review session (looking forward to seeing the video now, and whether it's any better than the last one), so it looks like two days off was the right decision for them.