Cycling: Pedal Fast or Pedal Slow?

A reader of Outside magazine asks a question that has puzzled Geezer since he bought his first three-speed bike, back when there were such things as three speed bikes: Is it better to pedal fast or pedal slowly? The answer, sadly, is another question: better for what? Outside’s fitness answer man, Chris Carmichael, spells it out nicely and throws in some advice for both kinds of workouts.
Pedaling slowly, says Carmichael, adds resistance, which means you
have to recruit a lot of muscle fibers in your legs to make it happen, and for most of us, those fibers fatigue easily. Pedaling faster, on the other hand, shifts the stress from your legs to your heart and lungs, which don’t fatigue the same way
that skeletal muscles do, so you can ride longer with less suffering. So if the goal is to go farther and hurt less, the answer is “pedal fast.” If, however, the goal is to increase leg strength, Carmichael recommends low-cadence, high-resistance intervals. Have a look at Carmichael’s fast-pedal and slow-pedal workouts.