Cross-sport specificity of turnover-frequency raises some interesting
questions.

Jeff Potter wrote
I'm focusing instead on cadence.

I'll take this in terms of Skating, since that's what I do nowadays. Here's
some key factors in stroke-cycle performance:
-- Force of push
-- Distance of push, Range of motion
-- Turnover frequency (a.k.a. "cadence")
(and there's other dimensions like Efficiency and Endurance).

(1) Focusing specificity on only one factor in isolation from the others
doesn't sound like a good bet.

(2) I think bicycling tends to have a smaller Distance of push or Range of
motion than skating (Why? see more below).

(3) If you push in a smaller range of motion, but also in a shorter
phase-time (which goes with higher turnover frequency), then you can get a
_MuscleSpeed_ similar to a push thru a larger range of motion at a lower
turnover rate.

(4) Since both Skating and Bicycling allow a wide range of "gearing"
_outside_ the selection of muscle-joint sub-range (e.g. by choice of ski
angle) -- it's not unreasonable to guess that by "natural feel" you can tune
the turnover frequency and outside mechanical factors in both, to achieve a
similar combination of MuscleSpeed and Force on the Power-Force-MuscleSpeed
curve.

So maybe (?) whatever combination of turnover frequency and other factors
that gives the feel of "about right for good LT" on a bicycle, will also
turn out to be about the same Force/MuscleSpeed combination which is "about
right for good LT" on Skating -- even though the turnover frequency for good
LT in skating would be rather different. (? same with Sprint workouts and
LSD workouts ?)

Ken

P.S. Some ideas on _why_ bike racers have a smaller range of motion:
This is largely determined by crank-arm length. Elite bike racers could
choose longer cranks -- and easily push them. But they don't. I think that
lets them focus their outside mechanical optimization (gearing, frame
geometry) and muscular-performance training on a tighter sub-range of their
leg-motion. Smaller "target" implies more precise optimization.

I suspect Skaters need to take on a larger sub-range because the _overhead_
of initiating a skate-push and recovering from it is larger than for bicycle
pedaling. So they need to accept a larger dose of Power-Force-MuscleSpeed
sub-optimality in each push-stroke in order to get sufficient "payback" to
justify the per-stroke overhead. (The per-stroke "overhead" is even larger
for the pole-push, and guess what: elite racers select an even larger
distance range for that motion).