Plan for off-season fitness?

What is a good outline to follow for just buiding base fitness? I want to have some focus to my swims and bikes, but never having been a road biker before, I need to build up a good base. Biking by time is easy enough, but what about ideas like cadence, gears, heart rate and speed for the novice road biker? I understand all these concepts but would like to apply them so that my foundation workouts have some kind of focus, without being micromanaged.

FOr example, bycycling magazine recently ran a sidebar article that basically said to ride for 6 months or so until you can do an hour at a cadence of 90. It didn't mention at what gear ratio, heart rate or ride type (hills/flats, etc) I like the simplicity of that, and yet it gives me a goal when I go out to ride.

Do you think that's good advice, or are there better ways to go about being a road bike beginner, like training by HR?

Same questions go for swimming, which I have a little more experience at, but have not trained for more than 4 weeks out of the year since I was about 14. That's about 20 years ago! I have a HR monitor, but no bike computer.