High or Low Cadence Before the Run? What Bike Cadence Does to Your First Kilometres

Every triathlete knows the advice about the last few kilometres of the bike. Some coaches say to spin a lighter gear at a high cadence to flush the legs and get them ready for the faster turnover of running. Others say to push a bigger gear at a lower cadence, because it costs less energy and leaves more for the run. Both sound plausible. Both can't be right as a universal rule.

This is one of the oldest questions in triathlon research, and a handful of laboratory studies have tested it directly. This article goes through what they found, why they disagree, who they studied, and what a sensible approach looks like. It stays on cadence only; TriForward's "The Bike-to-Run Brick Problem" covers the wider question of why the first kilometre off the bike feels so strange and how brick training helps.

Why cadence might matter

There are a few theories about how bike cadence could affect the run that follows.

• Energy cost. For a given power output, there's a cadence at which cycling uses the least energy. In lab studies it's often lower than the cadence riders choose for themselves. Riding at that energy-saving cadence might leave more in reserve for the run.
• Muscle fatigue. A lower cadence means more force per pedal stroke, which may fatigue the leg muscles differently, while a higher cadence spreads the work over more, lighter strokes.
• Movement pattern. Running stride frequency is typically higher than bike cadence. Riding at a high cadence just before running might make the switch to a quick stride easier.

These theories pull in different directions, which helps explain why the studies disagree.

Note that bike cadence and running cadence are separate questions. TriForward's "Should You Raise Your Cadence?" covers running step rate, which is a matter of how you run, not how you rode. This article is only about whether the pedalling rate in the bike leg changes the run that follows it, in the minutes and kilometres after T2.

The review: 39 studies, no clear answer

A 2022 systematic review by Rodrigo Bini and colleagues in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport pulled together the research on running after cycling. From 7,495 records, they included 39 studies.

Their conclusions:

• Running after cycling usually impaired performance compared with running fresh.
• The biomechanical and physiological effects were unclear, because studies produced conflicting results with different designs.
• Studies that changed cycling cadence or intensity produced inconsistent effects on biomechanics, physiology and performance.
• It remains unclear whether changing pedalling cadence or intensity improves running after cycling.

That's the headline: there's no consistent evidence for either high or low cadence. The individual studies below show why.

The study that favoured high cadence

A 2002 study by Gottschall and Palmer in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise gave the clearest result in favour of a high cadence.

• Participants: 13 male triathletes.
• Protocol: 30 minutes of high-intensity cycling, then an immediate 3,200 m run at race effort. On separate days, they cycled at their preferred cadence, at a cadence 20% higher, or at a cadence 20% lower.
• Result: the run was nearly a minute faster after the fast-cadence ride than after the slow-cadence ride.
• Mechanism: stride frequency was higher after the fast-cadence ride, while stride length and joint angles didn't change.

The authors concluded that riding a higher cadence just before running increased stride frequency and, as a result, running speed. The abstract didn't report exact times or statistics, so the size of the difference relative to the preferred cadence isn't clear from what's available.

The study that found no difference

A 2003 study by Bernard and colleagues in the British Journal of Sports Medicine used a set of fixed cadences.

• Participants: 9 well-trained triathletes.
• Protocol: 20 minutes of cycling at more than 80% of VO2max, an intensity similar to sprint-distance racing, at 60, 80 or 100 rpm, followed by a 3,000 m track run. They also ran 3,000 m without cycling first.
• Run times: 625.7 seconds after 60 rpm, 630.0 after 80 rpm and 637.7 after 100 rpm, against 583.0 seconds for the run without cycling.

Cycling first clearly slowed the run, by around 40 to 55 seconds. But the differences between cadences weren't significant. In the first 500 m, stride rate and running speed were higher after 80 or 100 rpm than after 60 rpm, so the higher cadences did produce a quicker start. After 60 rpm, the athletes ran at a higher fraction of their VO2max. Inference: the faster start after high cadence didn't translate into a faster 3 km overall, perhaps because it cost more later or because the athletes evened out their pace.

The studies that favoured lower cadence

Two studies from Fabrice Vercruyssen and colleagues pointed the other way.

The first, published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise in 2002, studied 8 triathletes cycling for 30 minutes just above their ventilatory threshold, followed by a 15-minute run. They rode at three cadences: their most energy-efficient cadence (about 73 rpm), their freely chosen cadence (about 81 rpm) and 90 rpm.

• Oxygen uptake rose during the ride at 90 rpm (by 12.0%) and at the freely chosen cadence (10.4%), but not at the energy-efficient cadence.
• During the run, oxygen uptake crept upwards over time after the two higher cadences (by 4.1% and 3.6%), a sign of rising energy cost, but stayed stable after the energy-efficient cadence.
• Running after cycling used 11.7% more oxygen, with a 7.2% higher stride rate, than running alone.

The second, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2005, studied 8 triathletes riding for 30 minutes at 90% of lactate threshold. For the last 10 minutes, they kept their freely chosen cadence (about 94 rpm), dropped it by 20% (about 74 rpm) or raised it by 20% (about 109 rpm). They then ran to exhaustion at 85% of their maximal running speed.

• Run time to exhaustion: 894 seconds after the low cadence, 651 seconds after the freely chosen cadence and 624 seconds after the high cadence.
• Cycling oxygen uptake, heart rate and blood lactate were lower at the end of the low-cadence ride.
• Running stride pattern and metabolism didn't differ between conditions.

The authors suggested that the lower metabolic load at the end of the ride may explain the longer run. Note that a run to exhaustion at a fixed speed is a different test from a race, and individual results varied widely, with standard deviations of around 200 seconds.

The 10 km study

Most of these studies used short rides and short runs. A 2005 study by Garry Tew in the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine came closer to Olympic-distance racing.

• Participants: 8 male recreational triathletes, average age 39, with at least 2 years of triathlon experience.
• Protocol: 65 minutes of cycling at 70% of peak power, at their preferred cadence (about 85 rpm), 15% faster (about 97 rpm) or 15% slower (about 72 rpm), followed by a self-paced 10 km treadmill run. They also ran 10 km without cycling first.
• 10 km times: 49:58 after the slow cadence, 49:09 after the preferred cadence and 49:28 after the fast cadence. The differences weren't significant. The run without cycling took 44:45.
• The first 500 m was significantly slower after the slow cadence than after the preferred or fast cadence.

Inference: this is the most age-grouper-like sample in the evidence, and it found that cadence affected the opening of the run but not the outcome.

Why the studies disagree

Looking across the five studies, a few patterns explain the mixed results:

• Different outcomes. A 3 km race, a 10 km time trial and a run to exhaustion at a fixed speed measure different things.
• Different cadence changes. Some studies changed cadence for the whole ride, one only for the last 10 minutes, and some used fixed cadences rather than changes relative to each athlete's own.
• Different intensities and durations, from 20 minutes above 80% of VO2max to 65 minutes at a moderate effort.
• Tiny samples. With 8 to 13 participants, a real but small effect is easy to miss, and a chance finding is easy to make.

Populations and sex split

• Gottschall and Palmer: 13 men.
• Tew: 8 men.
• Bernard and the two Vercruyssen studies: 9, 8 and 8 triathletes; the sex split wasn't reported in the material read for this article.

None studied women specifically, and none tested Ironman-length rides or runs. All were lab or track protocols lasting at most a little over an hour of cycling. Inference: the evidence may not transfer to long-course racing, where fatigue, fuelling and heat change the picture, or to female triathletes.

When the course chooses your cadence

In the lab, cadence was set by the researchers on a flat, controlled effort. On a real course, the last kilometres before T2 may include a climb, a descent, technical corners or a headwind, all of which change your cadence whether you plan it or not. A steep climb near the end forces a lower cadence and higher force per stroke; a fast descent may leave you spinning or freewheeling.

Inference: on a hilly finish, the more useful decisions are probably about gearing and effort, so you're not grinding at a very low cadence near your limit just before you run. TriForward's "Big Gear, Low Cadence" covers what low-cadence riding asks of your legs, and why it's a different thing from strength training. On a flat finish, holding your normal cadence with a steady effort is the simplest option and fits the evidence.

The pattern in the first few hundred metres

One finding appears in more than one study. In both Bernard's and Tew's studies, the first 500 m off the bike was quicker after higher cadences than after a low cadence, and in Gottschall and Palmer's study, stride frequency rose after a fast cadence. Inference: a higher cadence before T2 may make the first few hundred metres feel quicker and your stride snappier. Whether that's useful depends on the race: in a short race, it could help; in a long race, starting the run faster than planned is rarely an advantage. TriForward's "The Bike-to-Run Brick Problem" discusses treating the opening of the run as a settling-in period.

What this means in practice

The following suggestions are inference from the evidence, not tested strategies:

• Ride close to your own freely chosen cadence. No study showed a consistent benefit from moving away from it, and the largest effects came from 20% changes in either direction.
• Avoid dramatic changes at the end of the bike. Grinding a big gear or spinning frantically in the last kilometres may change how your first 500 m feels without improving your run.
• Test any change in brick sessions. If you want to try riding the last 10 minutes at a slightly lower or higher cadence, compare it over several bricks. TriForward's "The Bike-to-Run Brick Problem" covers how to structure them.
• Pace the run off your plan, not your first 500 m. Whatever cadence you choose, the studies suggest it mainly changes the opening.
• Prioritise effort over cadence. Bike intensity, pacing and fuelling have bigger, better-documented effects on the run. See TriForward's "Smooth Beats Surgy".

A triathlon scenario

The following example is illustrative, not drawn from a study. An age-group athlete racing an Olympic-distance triathlon normally rides at around 85 rpm. A clubmate tells them to drop to 70 rpm in the last 5 km to "save the legs". On race day, they try it for the first time, feel sluggish in the first kilometre, and finish the run slower than usual.

Based on the evidence, a better approach might be to keep their normal cadence, ease the effort slightly in the last few minutes if needed, and experiment with cadence changes in training bricks before deciding whether they help.

Common mistakes

• Adopting a cadence rule from one study. The studies point in different directions.
• Trying a new cadence on race day. Test in training first.
• Judging the change by the first 500 m. That's what cadence seems to affect most, and it's not the whole run.
• Grinding a very low cadence with sore knees. If you're prone to knee pain, a big gear is a poor experiment.
• Ignoring effort. How hard you ride matters more than how fast you pedal.

What we don't know

• Whether cadence matters in Ironman or 70.3 racing, where rides last hours.
• Whether women respond differently, since none of the studies focused on them.
• Whether the best cadence differs between individuals, which small group studies can't show.
• Whether practising a particular cadence strategy changes its effect.
• Whether fuelling, heat or race-day nerves interact with cadence, since none of the lab studies included them.

References

• Bini RR, Jacques TC, Hunter J, Figueiredo P. Biomechanical and physiological implications to running after cycling and strategies to improve cycling to running transition: a systematic review. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 2022;25(10):861–866. doi:10.1016/j.jsams.2022.07.006
• Gottschall JS, Palmer BM. The acute effects of prior cycling cadence on running performance and kinematics. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 2002;34(9):1518–1522. doi:10.1097/00005768-200209000-00019
• Bernard T, Vercruyssen F, Grego F, Hausswirth C, Lepers R, Vallier JM, Brisswalter J. Effect of cycling cadence on subsequent 3 km running performance in well trained triathletes. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2003;37(2):154–159. doi:10.1136/bjsm.37.2.154
• Vercruyssen F, Brisswalter J, Hausswirth C, Bernard T, Bernard O, Vallier JM. Influence of cycling cadence on subsequent running performance in triathletes. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 2002;34(3):530–536. doi:10.1097/00005768-200203000-00022
• Vercruyssen F, Suriano R, Bishop D, Hausswirth C, Brisswalter J. Cadence selection affects metabolic responses during cycling and subsequent running time to fatigue. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2005;39(5):267–272. doi:10.1136/bjsm.2004.011668
• Tew G. The effect of cycling cadence on subsequent 10km running performance in well-trained triathletes. Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, 2005;4(3):342–353. Journal of Sports Science and Medicine full text