I wear a HR strap but don’t have it displayed on my Garmin.
I do find it’s very useful in tracking aerobic fitness, however – my LTHR is 153, and I look at 123, 130, and 135 as my HR benchmarks for aerobic base fitness. How many watts at each of those checkpoints? That tells me how my “Oatmeal fitness” is doing.
From what I’ve read, listened to, and understand, there seems to be a wide dismissal of heart rate as a good method of measuring training efforts, as such, we all use power. With that said, wouldn’t your heart rate act as a barrier for the power I’m able to put out?
As an example, I trained for a marathon (running race) for the last 20 weeks, where I used HR and pace to track my training (e.g. zone 2 HR = certain pace range, etc). Come race week, I had a full week of crap sleep and on race day, the pace I trained in was more in the realm of zone 5 HR, as such, had to slow my pace significantly.
If pace is running’s equivalent of cycling’s power (I know there are running power meters now), couldn’t the scenario I encountered happen on the bike as well (i.e. zone 2 hr = certain power range for training…then race day training power range → zone 5 hr)?
Am I understanding this correctly? or am I completely wrong and making this more complicated?
I merged this to an existing thread. There are also many other existing threads and here is one search result to review:
https://www.trainerroad.com/forumsearch?q=heart%20rate%20power%20%23training
in a well paced zone 2 effort your type 1 (slow twitch) muscles are primary source of power to the bike pedals. The fuel for your muscles:
Your heart (along with lungs/arteries) is responsible for pushing oxygen into your blood and then delivering that oxygen to working muscles. If you are healthy and well rested, working in zone 2 at moderate temperatures with plenty of ventilation and hydration, your heart rate will be fairly stable from workout to workout. When you increase power from zone 2 to zone 3, your muscles need more fuel (oxygen) and so your heart rate will increase to pump oxygen faster. Just keep in mind that say a 150W zone 2 effort only requires X liters of oxygen per minute, and therefore say 130bpm heart rate to deliver that oxygen.
Back to your question. Heart rate is impacted by other variables, such as lack of sleep, stress, poor hydration, high heat, caffeine, etc. And so yes, while your HR only needs to be 130bpm to delivery the required oxygen, it is possible for a higher than normal heart rate depending on conditions and your physical well being.
Is that a barrier? For me it can become a pretty strong mental barrier, but other times I’ve pushed thru and it wasn’t too bad. However it did seem to put more stress on my body, requiring a longer than normal recovery after the race/workout.
Thank you!
There are several things that could reduce your fitness for a given day. All those things people list as reasons why they don’t like hr (heat, hydration
Stress, fatigue) are also extenal factors that can also impair performance. It is just as possible that a power plan might have to get ditched on race day.
Yup, I had this in a 70.3 earlier in the year. First 15 minutes on the bike and my HR was ~15bpm higher than it normally would be for my target power. RPE was off as well, felt harder than it should. Just wasn’t quite right that day for whatever reason. If I’d only had RPE and power to go by I think I’d have been tempted to push on at target power, but seeing my HR that high made me back off by 20W and heart gradually came back to a level more in line with what I normally race at. On the run my HR jumped again but RPE felt ok (suspect with hindsight this was adrenaline and excitement from T2 and all the supporters rather than actually feeling any better), so figured I could tough it out for 13 miles and charged on at target pace. Managed about 10 of those miles before the wheels fell off and had the most agonising last 3 miles of any race I’ve ever done including multiple IMs, 70.3s and marathons. Cramping, dizziness, etc. Dragged myself to the finish with a mix of stopping, walking and jogging, crossed about 15 minutes slower than I’d hoped so not disastrous. I think if I hadn’t paid attention to what my HR was doing on the bike my whole race would have been over by T2, and if I had carried on paying attention to it on the run I might have saved myself a lot of pain and maybe 5 minutes off my finish time.
I track HR in every training session and race. So have a huge knowledge base of how it typically tracks with power (or pace for running) and RPE under a range of conditions. Hot, cold, early, late, fresh, tired, race day excitement, etc. Always useful to have an extra information source and sometimes it saves the day!
I don’t think so. On holiday earlier this year I took my bike and went up Le Col de la Croix de Fer. My normal power at my sustainable HR for climbing is consistently high tempo/ low Sweetspot. On the flat run out to the climb I knew something was wrong when I was mid zone 2 power at that HR. So I had to decide carry on and climb slower or turn round. In the end I accepted I was having a bad day for some reason, lowered my expectations and climbed the hill.
I think it is useful because even riding in different temperatures for instance, your HR will vary for a given wattage effort. If you are riding on a cool fall day your HR for a given wattage is likely to be lower than if you are in the summer heat, so being able to see where your HR is can give you an indication to how hard its working. Just because I can hold a certain effort before blowing up on a 60* day doesn’t mean I can do the same thing on a 90* day so looking purely at W is not effective IMO.
Also a higher than normal HR can indicate general fatigue, if I am averaging 150bpm during a workout where I know i have previously averaged 135bpm, I know there’s a problem whether its heat related or something else.
I think I underestimated the toll a 1.5hr flight and staying in a hotel would have on me. Just a bitter pill to swallow when you execute on a training plan the best you can, dial in nutrition only to have to throw it all out and adjust your goal to “survive” the race. 
Thanks for the insight!
This might be a bit of a unique use-case scenario, but it highlights when I need to calibrate my trainer! I did a Polar Bear/Run brick, and I thought that the ride was just harder than normal. I noticed that my HR was about 15BPM higher than it usually is at that point in the workout. A quick calibration, and my HR dropped back to normal for the ‘same’ power output.
For those who don’t push their limit on training load over time I don’t think HR is really needed.
For 2,5 years i pushed CTL(last SSBHV round i ended on 130) and i have done alle my workouts on Watt. At 1 point i switched HR belt and in the same period and the following 6 months i noticed my HR was unusually low, like 8 beats off at max and on avg on all workouts (trianing and races).
As i didn care too much about HR i pushed it really far, But i had to start trying to figure it out, first i blamed the new HR belt, since i had good races and my watts were solid on the spring season. Then i did a loooong slow taper (first try) and suddenly my HR was back to normal, my watts and shape even better, and still is 3 months later (i was overtrained).
Long story short, use HR at long term historic followup if you push youre CTL high/to limit, if not I wouldn care too much.
Don’t forget to look at HRV. Ive been using heart rate for 32 years. It still has it place. But only good for about 80%.
Hrv is a game changer for heart rate data. It will till you more about the 24 hour day and life. A low heart rate is just that a low heart rate but hrs tells you how toxic your life is or isnt. Since i started using hrv. I have improved my recovery and what stresses me in life. Very important.
just my 02.cents
jeff
5 days with SS, but i did 30% or more SS on saturday and sunday compared to the original program, also did 5 hours extra Z2 per week. So yes my 6 week avg at the end was 130TSS/day.
After 3 years with no training (sickness and injuries) and barely moving out of bed i did quite a big TSS raise over the following years (and reached my limit and if i followed my HR better over time i could adjust training load faster.). Year 1: 21000 TSS, Year 2 34000 TSS Year 3 40300 TSS. (TSS was probably even higher, i always keep my FTP tad bit high too push my self to max.
As i said i got avg 8 hr lower on my max and on all workouts for about 6 months.
Now im lowering yearly TSS by 5000, allot comes from 1 day off a week (which i did not have), and i don’t think that day did any good for me.
This was exactly what I was interested in
Is that considered too much? That’s pretty much much what I have been doing for the last 6-7 weeks. Back when I was racing, that was pretty much the norm during the off-season
Well, both, but mostly the 2 hours a day of “sweetspot”, because as I said, that’s pretty much exactly what I have been doing now that I have started riding again. Seems like very little compared to what we used to do!
Yes. But to keep it simple. I use power for all my interval training on here. As mentioned above.
If you use HR for intervals you will drop your power as your hr goes up during your interval.
It is more painful using power ,but more effective as training.
Where I find HR useful is on my longer endurance rides, and its useful to know your HR zones ,so for example ,you do a 4 hour ride you can monitor your HR so you don’t go out too hard, or alternatively, your not just chugging along in zone 1! I tend not to use power on my outdoor rides ,because it shoots up as soon as theres a climb, then goes to zero on descents, which doesn`t really tell you anything useful.
I think Intervals.icu does what you’re looking for HRC they call it.
Wow, 900 TSS/week in the offseason? I rarely reach that in season. Crazy.