Originally Posted by
musicmaster
To start, I'm a marathon runner and have been running 70+ mile weeks for over 10 years. [...] As I have years of aerobic base training from running, I'm finding it hard to really judge effort while cycling via heart rate as my HR stays pretty low the entire time. Also, the consistent rolling hills or mountain climbs here in CO seem to make it difficult to judge.
I was thinking of purchasing on the crank-based power meters (The 4iiii) for around $350.
For those who have them, do you find they are worth the cost?
1. Not to be too blunt, but this particular forum is probably not the place you should be asking this question. I haven't found the quality of advice about power meters and their usage here to be especially high.
2. You've laid out your specific use case clearly and well. A power meter will probably help you learn to calibrate your RPE better, which appears to be your specific goal.
I'll either be doing an Oly Distance or Half Ironman next spring.
3. Slowtwitch may be a slightly better forum for you. If you get serious about this, the 4iiii may not fulfill all of your needs but for your existing stated use case it's almost surely fine. In fact, your usage isn't particularly demanding so for your specific case, something like a HRV-based meter could be just as fine, and it's cheaper. If your checkbook balance is high, of course, that may not matter.
Originally Posted by
musicmaster
Running:
My training pace for running is around 7:15/mile and around 165bpm. My marathon pace (6:00/mile) is around 180-185bpm.
4. Very nice. Sounds like your FTP is in the 5 watts/kg range.