Edge 705/Ex hockey playing sprinter/going for Endurance

azzurribike

Its fantastic not much more to say......... except the HR alert drives me nuts.

Had the flu and off for two weeks and was busting to get a ride in ...

I rode with the cycle club this weekend and went out with the faster group than I would normally ride with. (stupid move #1) Clipping along at a steady 38-40km and the alert goes off at 180 beats a minute, Im' in my red zone. crap it really p##$%&d me off.

Thing is, If it did not go off I probably would have kept going. I have a naturally high heart rate so I was not too concerned. (I did the ride till you see St Peter and the gates and managed max of 199) (setting alert stupid move #2)

The Garmin is great and will help me get down to 70Kgs so I can be a reasonable climber.

Question is over what period should I see a drop in heart rate for same level of exertion?

xover_runner

Don't think you will.

Max HR is sort of fixed apart from a gradual decline with age. You need to find out your max (you say 199) and establish training zones. 180 is 90% of your max and there is nothing wrong with doing that in fairly long intervals. That's probably 25M TT pace for most (it is for me) and an hour of that is quite doable in a painful sort of way.

Could be the start of an interesting thread; this area generates lots of opinions. Well done and keep training!!

Infamous

If you are riding with a fast group, you are there to keep up with them, not to train on your heart rate.

Also, is there much merit in keeping your heart rate down in this case? unless you ride so hard that you can't complete the ride, you should go as hard as you can.

Bronzie

azzurribike wrote:

Question is over what period should I see a drop in heart rate for same level of exertion?

I'd have thought that as you get fitter, you should be able to ride at the same speed / produce the same power at a lower heart rate.

As to how long this change may take will depend on how fit you are now and what training you are doing. In my experience, it takes 6-8 weeks for my body to adapt to any new training load, after which time the improvements in fitness plateau and any further improvements are less marked.

PS I don't find the HR alert on the Garmin as good as the one on my old Polar HRM - the alert is annoyingly loud on the Garmin whereas on the Polar you get a beep of different pitch depending on whether you are above or below your target zone. Turn the Garmin's alarm off is the best solution!

azzurribike

HR alert now off!

Training hard and hope to do the participation ride at TDU 2009 in a reasonable time. Any Aussies here doing the ride or oither countries who would like to share their target time for the 143kms ride?