Originally Posted by
LMaster
You lost me a little here. 5k effort is usually somewhere between 14-20 min for a runner in good shape depending on how good they are. I'm not following how you could do 20 min intervals at 15 min race pace effort. Unless you mean doing 2-5 min repeats for 20 total minutes.
Same thing for the 10k effort stuff. If 10k effort is a 35 minute effort, riding for an hour at that pace seems impossible; again unless you mean breaking it up into 10-15 min chunks.
Sorry if I'm being dense and missing the point.
Sorry, you're not being obtuse, I am. I'm thinking of the pace I would run 5k on a training run, not race pace. Same for 10k. Difficult to describe the parallels between running and cycling, as I've just demonstrated.
Essentially a "tempo" hour is HR zone 3, the sort of pace that will leave you tested but not exhausted after an hour. And the 2x20 minute intervals should each leave you feeling that you could have gone harder, but not much...
Does that help?
EDIT: It occurs to me that you ex-runners might find some useful expertise in the triathlon forum. Those guys/gals will be better able to talk about the running/cycling transition than I am.