Originally Posted by
chasm54
How many hours a week do you have available to train? Do you have a heart-rate monitor and understand HR-based training? How much cycling have you been doing so far, and how fit are you from running?
Hours - 10-15 is no problem, any more than that would be too much in late Aug when school starts back up
HRM - No, I don't as in running you can be effective just going by pace/feel so I never really had the incentive to go out and spend 50-200+ on a decent HRM. Definitely understand it however.
Cycling History - Strava has me at 750 miles since the start of the year when I started using it it, probably a third or more of that is in the last 4 weeks. Before this year I might have cycled something like 200 miles a year, just an occasional ride for fun with friends/family or something.
Fitness - Running wise I was actually injured for 2 years with a groin issue that turned into a hip issue. Pre-injury I was 5'8" and 135 (61 kg) and in about 16:30 shape for 5k. Currently I'm around 155 (70) and probably in low 18/high 17 shape.
Cycling wise I have only a MTB to ride on at the moment, but am almost certainly going to be buying an entry level road bike in the next few weeks...its much more the riding I prefer. I know average speed means next to nothing in cycling but on the MTB I tend to cruise around at 15-17 on the somewhat hilly/rugged main gravel MUP around here. Rode 50M on the roads/MUP on Sunday at around 18 something and was fresh enough to run 6M a few hours later in the evening. Not really sure as far as wattages/FTP goes, estimating from the calculators I can find it seems like I can do 360W for 5 min effort and around 300W for 1 hour effort. That's just estimating from calculators though so that might not be even close to real.
Not sure how much it affects training but I live/ride in Colorado at 7000'