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Old 03-06-19, 03:21 PM
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ljsense
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You can train and race well without any electronics at all, just as you probably did at some point as a runner. Perceived exertion is valuable.

The time crunched cyclists has you doing 6 hours a week, with an emphasis on hard efforts, and other high intensity stuff. If you're in the part of Utah where you can climb, you should have no trouble. Some of the workouts have you ramp up to as fast as you can sprint and then hold that power for as many seconds as you can -- fancy electronics here just help you look back at what you did, not get you to do it correctly. Others are more structured intervals with zone targets that will seem harder to achieve, or at least verify, without a powermeter, but there are a lot of coaches who are just fine using heart rate data instead. And again, your internal pacing is valuable and will get better. If you do 5- or 20-minute pieces you may just be able to match them to a hill and see what you can do.

The stopwatch recommendations aren't literal stopwatches like your coach had at the track -- just anything to keep time. You could get the cheapest computer and it'd have it. Maybe if you've already got a watch that takes your heart rate, you won't need to buy a thing.

Finally, to answer your question, I'd skip the cadence. It'll be what it'll be. You'll find your rhythm, just go out and ride as much as you can.
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