Heart rate - a personal perspective

Training
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I’ve have always been an active person. Tall(ish) and slim build my whole life, little fluctuation in weight since being an adult and I’m not 38.

I got into cycling a lot more in 2021 and since then I’ve been steadily improving my cycling fitness. I’ve been training with power since early 2022 and being a data person absolutely love the amount of fun that can be had looking into it all and seeing trends etc. I have had a bit of a thing over the last few years about trying to improve my power output and reduce my heart rate while doing so… but I’m coming to the conclusion that it’s a lot more complicated than that.

As I get older, I’m getting fitter and stronger. I’m a 38M, 6ft in height and I weigh 67kg. I’ve never been in such good shape, my body composition looks better and I’m faster on the bike and hills. I’m probably eating better, so I have no doubt that this has had an impact. However, when pushing hard on hills I regularly get higher heart rate numbers. in 2022 my max HR was 200bpm, 2023 it was 204bpm and this year I hit 208bpm. I’ve also noticed that when comparing efforts using intervals.icu - I don’t see a trend of my heart rate lowering when compared to power output. I see the opposite, it has been increasing. And I have a theory as to why…

I came into 2021 after doing the least amount of activity in my life. With Covid, home schooling, working and dealing with everything else life throws at you, I was probably the most unfit I had been. When cycling in 2021 I started with a lower power output (probably, didn’t have power until the end of the year) but I was enjoying it and getting out more and rode bout 1,300km in 6 months. intervals.icu also shows my ‘fitness’ has steadily improved, and this is in part due to better training habits and more consistency. When comparing Power vs Heart rate on intervals.icu I can see that in the lower power ranges (now Z2, but previously sweetspot) I have a lower heart rate. It is in the higher ranges (previously well above FTP and now around sweetspot) that I see an increase in HR. One thing this doesn’t show though is my recovery on the bike. When looking at individual rides from 2021 to now there is a stark difference - in 2021 my HR would generally sit around the same for the whole ride, now there are huge peaks and dips where I am able to recover and then put another effort in on a hill. I think this is the biggest change and sign that I’m getting fitter. My theory on the increased average HR data is this - I am not able to hold the higher heart rate for longer periods and I am able to recover faster before I can put another effort in, therefore increasing my average HR once again. For me, based on my own experience, understanding my own body and realising that this improvement in recovery shows my fitness increase is really comforting. Having a higher rate has led me to numerous articles about HR and the more I read the more I understand that HR is a totally unique characteristic. No one else is built like you, no one else has trained like you. Yes, there are things we can take from studies and training programs, I’m not saying we can’t - but be careful when comparing yourself to others and learn to understand and be encouraged by your own adaptations, improvements and successes. I know there will be failures in there as well, but we should learn to turn these into motivation for going again. Just look at the inspiration from Hannah Otto’s FKT journey over the last year!

I hope this motivates some people out there. Comparison is the thief of joy, but all too easy to be consumed by it with so much on social media and other platforms.

Love TR and the TR community - just wanted to share my recent take on this. I know it wouldn’t get the same love on Reddit :joy:

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My theory is your genetic max HR isn’t getting higher but your ability to realise it as you get fitter :+1:

Myself Ive always had a high HR but ignored what I felt were stupidly high numbers that on hindsight were probably correct but hey ho, its meant the decline in what I’m using as my figure for max HR isn’t as extreme as I age. I’m 48yo fwiw (nearly 49, scary to think I’m 50 next year :astonished:) and I’m still going off 197bpm which I last hit in May last year and relatively regular before that (the most Ive hit this year is 194bpm) but it feels right.

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oh yes you’re totally right, the ability to reach my max is being met. I was kind of eluding to this I guess, but didn’t really define in this way - but yes, essentially what I was trying to say.

I just find it interesting, because it’s something that I sometimes worry about when reading about HR but wanted to give my perspective for those having the same feelings when their own HR is high… or very low

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funnily enough, when I HR is low I now know it is because of fatigue rather than my getting fitter.

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I too have more of a „high“ heart rate, meaning max (198) and resting heart rate (62) seem high for my fitness.

Over the years I found heart rate in the lower zones to drop. Not infrequently I find it in Z1 (like when walking very easy) while pedaling in low Z2 power. While in the higher power zones it‘s still high. :upside_down_face:

Reaction of the heart to changes has also improved a lot (if I‘m not fatigued or smashed). And heat elevates heart rate during rides quite a bit.

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I’m pretty much in the same boat, age 54, resting 58 max 194, I was under the impression that it was due to heart volume, smaller heart with less volume has to beat more often to push the same about of blood, this isn’t anything to be worried about, it doing less work more often, in the same way that muscles have more strain of you are doing 200W @ 40RPM over 200W @ 90RPM

Few years ago I suffered from Pericardial effusion (don’t train when you have been ill kids, and it’s good reason to record you heart raate) and was talking to the consultant about this very thing, and his response was basically, if your not in pain and it’s normal for you don’t worry about it, it’s 0 thats the one to worry about

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Basically this. I suspect we’d all be able to squeeze out a higher max HR in lab conditions and someone encouraging us to keep at it.

Same with resting heart rate. There will be a lower limit based on your genetics and training history. There’s the physical properties of your own cardio vascular physiology plus the blood volume, iron levels, haemoglobin etc ability to transport oxygen.

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If you check out the statistics calculated by intervals.icu, he has a HRRc method which stands for heart rate recovery. You can see how many heartbeats you lowered within 60 seconds following your highest effort on a ride. As you say, it’s a sign of your ability to recover.

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This TR workout does similar:

I regularly complete it as it also makes for a good warm up to harder workouts / TTs and keep track of the numbers, a reduction in recovery rate is a strong indication of fatigue

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Thank you so much for sharing and giving your insights! I enjoyed reading your post and I am glad to hear that you feel the love from the TR Forum Community :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: I too think that it’s easy to compare ourselves to others, so thank you as well for the reminder!

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Thank you so much @Caro.Gomez-Villafane - those are really kind words and I’m grateful for everything the TR peeps and community do.

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Same here. In September I hit a season’s best 2min power a few days before feeling symptoms of being sick (covid, as it turned out). I was very fit at the time and had been riding a lot, but that day my HR was at least 10bpm lower than normal for the same max-effort VO2 Strava segments I was chasing, and also for a 23min threshold+ power TT at the end of my ride.

At first I wondered if my chest strap was malfunctioning… “how can I be under 160bpm after I’ve been doing this power for the last 90sec?”

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FWIW: I could only ever hit my max HR in very high effort competitive situations, and then only for seconds. In the absence of those, I don’t know what actual max HR is. In my early 50s it was 190 and in m early 60s was 180. That works out to 240-age in my case. Given that, I extrapolate my current max HR to be 170, though without high effort competitive situations, I only get into the low to mid 160s.