Really High HR

the_scattman

I've been training on the TT over the winter, and I've been finding I can keep a constant HR fairly easily at the top end of zone 2 when I'm keeping the intensity low.

However as soon as I try to increase the intensity my HR rockets up to 90-95% MHR and I find it impossible to keep in the 70-80% zone 3 which I'm targeting. Though I can hold the intensity at this level with the high HR for 5-10mins, before I start to feel light headed.

I've tried taking my pulse on my wrist and when I do that often seems to be 20-30bpm lower than what my HRM is telling me, so am slightly confused.

Does anyone have any advise how I train to improve my power output, without maxing out my hearth so often?

GiantMike

the_scattman wrote:

I've tried taking my pulse on my wrist and when I do that often seems to be 20-30bpm lower than what my HRM is telling me, so am slightly confused.

It sounds like your HRM is giving you false readings. Once you get that sorted you'll be better placed to determine what work outs you wnat to do.

Team4Luke

the_scattman wrote:

I've been training on the TT over the winter, and I've been finding I can keep a constant HR fairly easily at the top end of zone 2 when I'm keeping the intensity low.

However as soon as I try to increase the intensity my HR rockets up to 90-95% MHR and I find it impossible to keep in the 70-80% zone 3 which I'm targeting. Though I can hold the intensity at this level with the high HR for 5-10mins, before I start to feel light headed.

I've tried taking my pulse on my wrist and when I do that often seems to be 20-30bpm lower than what my HRM is telling me, so am slightly confused.

Does anyone have any advise how I train to improve my power output, without maxing out my hearth so often?

am guessing your training to Power ?

"try to increase the intensity my HR rockets" - increase the intensity to what level exactly ?
Zone 3, how long have you been told to hold this level for ?
What HRM are you using, shouldn't be anything wrong with that if you using a quality known brand make
You have more or less answered yourself at the end there, it is a case of building up time length in zone but sounds like your HR zones are wrong as you have clearly gone to race pace if your feeling light headed, power levels are too high and might have to drop them down too.

I don't train at power so will defer to the watts experts, but your issues are just the sort of reason I don't use power, each to their own though.

amaferanga

Team4Luke wrote:

am guessing your training to Power ?

"try to increase the intensity my HR rockets" - increase the intensity to what level exactly ?
Zone 3, how long have you been told to hold this level for ?
What HRM are you using, shouldn't be anything wrong with that if you using a quality known brand make
You have more or less answered yourself at the end there, it is a case of building up time length in zone but sounds like your HR zones are wrong as you have clearly gone to race pace if your feeling light headed, power levels are too high and might have to drop them down too.

I don't train at power so will defer to the watts experts, but your issues are just the sort of reason I don't use power, each to their own though.

Eh? What are you on about? There's no mention of power from the OP anyway, but I can't see why the 'issues' here would be reason to not use a power meter.

Team4Luke

OP says increasing the intensity but does not actually state how they are doing so, could be on feel, HR or speed, however last line states "how I train to improve my power output" without maxing out my hearth."

the_scattman

thanks for the the comments, I've got a garmin edge 500 with the HRM, and in the past I've had a cateye HRM, both have given me similar HR readings when out on a ride.

It's hard to judge if my HRM is giving me duff readings, as it show's my resting HR to be around 50bpm, which matches a manual pulse check and I did a MHR self test in Jan, I hit 199 bpm, which I thought was reasonable a range. Though at the weekend I was doing 5 mins intervals out of the saddle to simulate hill climbs and afterwards I saw I hit 204 bpm, as I wasn't watching my HR at the time. In fact, I'd did 4 x 5min intervals and each time my HR stayed about 190 bpm for the whole 5mins and dropped down to about 160 during the 5mins rest.

I've tried to base my training plan around spending time in the specific HR zones, with the majority of time required in zone 3 to increase overall fitness, and then some intervals in zone 4 to increase strength. I've got a cycl-op fluid pro and have been using their chart to get an approximate power output. I've been using 2 types of interval,
1) short 1minute bursts at around 400W and
2) longer 5mins intervals at around 225W.
I mix these up with longer sessions keeping in zone 2 training at 150W.

to be honest I'm not sure how the power output on the TT compares to out on the road, but I know last year I could done a 10 mile time trial in around 27mins, but I don't seem to be able to keep that up on the TT.

jgsi

Keeping up 400 watts for 60 sec intervals, no surprise your hr is well up....
This is not an issue for you to cause concern is it?

Team4Luke

HR on the Garmin should be fine, I moved from Polar to a 305 and both agree nicely.
Don't know your age but perhaps youngish hence you being able to easily get high HR, also as you seem to easily spike your HR up then possibly you haven't done enough volume on the road in the lower to mid zones. A balance of training is required, don't get overly caught up in high effort intervals whilst these can though show improvements for an untrained or lesser trained person, you still need to be able to hold high efforts and this is where longer efforts are required, 1-3 hour rides at set efforts.
27mins is a good start, ave over 20mph there, training on the rack is mentally far harder, some can handle it, some of the top TT'ers in the country do a majority of their training on the rack. Also very crucial how your turbo is set up and how it compares to the road, in terms of resistance and flywheel size and weight, could be yours is harder than the road and you need to back off. You would need proper Power to sort that out, ie Powertap wheel, SRMs etc to ensure your doing similar efforts all the time.

phil s

Could be an issue with your Garmin strap - I have the soft strap and sometimes it's just telling me bare-faced porkies. Do a Google search on this strap and you'll find plenty of problems with it. If it's not that, then I'm afraid I can't help you.

the_scattman

Team4Luke wrote:

HR on the Garmin should be fine, I moved from Polar to a 305 and both agree nicely.
Don't know your age but perhaps youngish hence you being able to easily get high HR, also as you seem to easily spike your HR up then possibly you haven't done enough volume on the road in the lower to mid zones. A balance of training is required, don't get overly caught up in high effort intervals whilst these can though show improvements for an untrained or lesser trained person, you still need to be able to hold high efforts and this is where longer efforts are required, 1-3 hour rides at set efforts.
27mins is a good start, ave over 20mph there, training on the rack is mentally far harder, some can handle it, some of the top TT'ers in the country do a majority of their training on the rack. Also very crucial how your turbo is set up and how it compares to the road, in terms of resistance and flywheel size and weight, could be yours is harder than the road and you need to back off. You would need proper Power to sort that out, ie Powertap wheel, SRMs etc to ensure your doing similar efforts all the time.

I'm 34, I have been doing about 3-4 hours a week of training on the TT over the winter, split over 3 sessions. On Sunday's I do a 1 1/2hr session were I'm targeting to keep my HR below 140bpm, On Tuesday I do a 1hr session of intervals and on Thursdays I generally mix it up, starting off steady passed, and then some increased work, with out of the saddle work and one footed training.

I moved to Central Europe in December, so weather hasn't been suitable for riding on the road, but it's starting to warm up now, so will have to see how my fitness compares once I'm out and about compared to the TT. Plus there is a nice 4km long hill close by, with a 200m height increase which I'm itching to try.

the_scattman

JGSI wrote:

Keeping up 400 watts for 60 sec intervals, no surprise your hr is well up....
This is not an issue for you to cause concern is it?

What is the typical power output needed to sustain 20mph on the open road?

jgsi

the_scattman wrote:

JGSI wrote:

Keeping up 400 watts for 60 sec intervals, no surprise your hr is well up....
This is not an issue for you to cause concern is it?

What is the typical power output needed to sustain 20mph on the open road?

It certainly ISNT 400 watts..

I averaged just under 20 for 58 miles in a reliability run this morning, at no point did i need to dig into my bag of tricks for anything like that amount of power. I dont train with a power meter but I do do very hi intensity turbo sessions which 'feel' like mega watts, but realistically are not.

shockedsoshocked

the_scattman wrote:

JGSI wrote:

Keeping up 400 watts for 60 sec intervals, no surprise your hr is well up....
This is not an issue for you to cause concern is it?

What is the typical power output needed to sustain 20mph on the open road?

Around 200, give or take.

RideOnTime

phil s wrote:

Could be an issue with your Garmin strap - I have the soft strap and sometimes it's just telling me bare-faced porkies. Do a Google search on this strap and you'll find plenty of problems with it. If it's not that, then I'm afraid I can't help you.

Agreed...

phil s

If it is a problem with the Garmin strap (as it is in my case) then this might help http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2010/08/solu ... pikes.html

Tom Dean

the_scattman wrote:

On Sunday's I do a 1 1/2hr session were I'm targeting to keep my HR below 140bpm

This is a recovery level ride - a total waste of your time if you are doing 3-4 hours per week.

Team4Luke

the_scattman wrote:

Team4Luke wrote:

HR on the Garmin should be fine, I moved from Polar to a 305 and both agree nicely.
Don't know your age but perhaps youngish hence you being able to easily get high HR, also as you seem to easily spike your HR up then possibly you haven't done enough volume on the road in the lower to mid zones. A balance of training is required, don't get overly caught up in high effort intervals whilst these can though show improvements for an untrained or lesser trained person, you still need to be able to hold high efforts and this is where longer efforts are required, 1-3 hour rides at set efforts.
27mins is a good start, ave over 20mph there, training on the rack is mentally far harder, some can handle it, some of the top TT'ers in the country do a majority of their training on the rack. Also very crucial how your turbo is set up and how it compares to the road, in terms of resistance and flywheel size and weight, could be yours is harder than the road and you need to back off. You would need proper Power to sort that out, ie Powertap wheel, SRMs etc to ensure your doing similar efforts all the time.

I'm 34, I have been doing about 3-4 hours a week of training on the TT over the winter, split over 3 sessions. On Sunday's I do a 1 1/2hr session were I'm targeting to keep my HR below 140bpm, On Tuesday I do a 1hr session of intervals and on Thursdays I generally mix it up, starting off steady passed, and then some increased work, with out of the saddle work and one footed training.

I moved to Central Europe in December, so weather hasn't been suitable for riding on the road, but it's starting to warm up now, so will have to see how my fitness compares once I'm out and about compared to the TT. Plus there is a nice 4km long hill close by, with a 200m height increase which I'm itching to try.

seems you have minimum time to train/train on road and your trying to make the most of the turbo, what your doing in itself isn't too bad for winter time training if it will be followed up on road. But if training time is a restraint then none of this is going to help improve your 10 time or any TT time in fact.
The below 140bpm stuff won't produce a training effect for improved power and speed, fine as base work for a long season wanting to hold form better. I'm not a fan of any short intervals whatsoever, for me nothing ever shorter than 20mins, (2x10mins could be a good workout though) the aim in a time trial is to hold a high effort for a long period and for me this disagrees with very short intervals to produce improvements over a 20+ minute time trial. Just my experience, not saying they don't produce results, because there is evidence to the contrary, but doesn't work for me and I see bigger gains that hold form for longer from much much longer efforts. Your mixed efforts don't fit in with anything unless your into Road Racing.
Ditch the power chart as can't see that being accurate.

Team4Luke

the_scattman wrote:

JGSI wrote:

Keeping up 400 watts for 60 sec intervals, no surprise your hr is well up....
This is not an issue for you to cause concern is it?

What is the typical power output needed to sustain 20mph on the open road?

would depend on the wind and terrain. Try and ride at and average 20mph and your legs will tell you !

the_scattman

I've been using this training schedule as my winter base training, while the weather hasn't been good out doors. Going forward I will be getting out on the road and start going on 3-4 hours rides on Sundays and I'll be keeping up the Tuesdays and Thursdays TT sessions for a bit longer till the nights draw out a bit more.

Maybe my previous comments were missleading, my main focus is sportives, I did 5 events around 100miles last year and I want to improve on my best time of 5 1/2 hrs for 100miles this year. I know my climbing ability needs to improve, which was what was driving me to want to improve my power output (hence my rough workings with power output)

If I need to adjust my training plan now, I'm open to suggestions

Velonutter

There's a known fault with the Garmin HRM's, mind was saying that my heart rate was up to 251, I contacted Garmin and they said they had had a few report's and sent out a replacement, didn't want the old one back.

One of my club mates had a similar problem this weekend and has now contacted Garmin.

HTH

phil s

Velonutter wrote:

There's a known fault with the Garmin HRM's, mind was saying that my heart rate was up to 251, I contacted Garmin and they said they had had a few report's and sent out a replacement, didn't want the old one back.

One of my club mates had a similar problem this weekend and has now contacted Garmin.

HTH

I had the same problem, and the guy I spoke to at Garmin insisted on me finding a proof of purchase - despite the same company not bothering with this in the case of other people. Hence why I have slagged off Garmin a bit and gone the 'safe' route of purchasing the Polar (strap only) which will be attached to the Garmin sensor. FWIW I've read reports of folk with replacement straps from Garmin also malfunctioning.

Team4Luke

the_scattman wrote:

I've been using this training schedule as my winter base training, while the weather hasn't been good out doors. Going forward I will be getting out on the road and start going on 3-4 hours rides on Sundays and I'll be keeping up the Tuesdays and Thursdays TT sessions for a bit longer till the nights draw out a bit more.

Maybe my previous comments were missleading, my main focus is sportives, I did 5 events around 100miles last year and I want to improve on my best time of 5 1/2 hrs for 100miles this year. I know my climbing ability needs to improve, which was what was driving me to want to improve my power output (hence my rough workings with power output)

If I need to adjust my training plan now, I'm open to suggestions

Sportives are not races so there is no control over the course, food stops, traffic lights or route, you can't really aim to beat your time and would be difficult to put improved time down to training.
Having said that, guess in some way they are somewhat like a road race, so that's how you need to look at your training, thus road miles, lots of them at steady endurance pace, keeping it steady on the climbs, certainly aim to ride in training your event distance at least once, some training close to it and plenty of shorter rides, say 50/60 where you can mix sessions with harder for the whole 50/60 and easier but going hard on the climbs.
I wouldn't bother with any type of intervals then as you will not be riding at those efforts in the events, base your training on your events, what are you asking your body to do.

doyler78

Team4Luke wrote:

the_scattman wrote:

I've been using this training schedule as my winter base training, while the weather hasn't been good out doors. Going forward I will be getting out on the road and start going on 3-4 hours rides on Sundays and I'll be keeping up the Tuesdays and Thursdays TT sessions for a bit longer till the nights draw out a bit more.

Maybe my previous comments were missleading, my main focus is sportives, I did 5 events around 100miles last year and I want to improve on my best time of 5 1/2 hrs for 100miles this year. I know my climbing ability needs to improve, which was what was driving me to want to improve my power output (hence my rough workings with power output)

If I need to adjust my training plan now, I'm open to suggestions

Sportives are not races so there is no control over the course, food stops, traffic lights or route, you can't really aim to beat your time and would be difficult to put improved time down to training.
Having said that, guess in some way they are somewhat like a road race, so that's how you need to look at your training, thus road miles, lots of them at steady endurance pace, keeping it steady on the climbs, certainly aim to ride in training your event distance at least once, some training close to it and plenty of shorter rides, say 50/60 where you can mix sessions with harder for the whole 50/60 and easier but going hard on the climbs.
I wouldn't bother with any type of intervals then as you will not be riding at those efforts in the events, base your training on your events, what are you asking your body to do.

Sorry I have to disagree. If the guy wants to improve his climbing then he is going to need to do one or both of two things and that is improve his power and/or reduce his weight. That can most effectively be done with intervals (for power improvement). In any case who says that in a sportive you never have to go near interval efforts. If you want to get round as quickly as possible, and the OP does, then he will want to stay in a groups that he is capable of staying with but not so slow that he wants to ride off the front and to do that he may on some ocassions need to dig in as the benefits of putting a bit of effort now will be more than paid back later, hopefully, by being able to draft the group. The super hard efforts and repeated surges of racing are unlikely to be a factor, other than maybe at the start, so doing lots of Level 6 or such intervals is unlikely to be of much use but the longer less intense intervals will certainly have a place in his training programme with more focus around SST/Threshold.

Team4Luke

pretty much covered what you say including doing hard efforts on climbs. Any super hard efforts in the event will result in losses later, far better to improve your engine for gains over the whole event length, the ability to ride at a slight increase in speed and the time gains thereof far outways smaller gains and lesser time gains from intense short intervals in training or during the event.

doyler78

Team4Luke wrote:

pretty much covered what you say including doing hard efforts on climbs. Any super hard efforts in the event will result in losses later, far better to improve your engine for gains over the whole event length, the ability to ride at a slight increase in speed and the time gains thereof far outways smaller gains and lesser time gains from intense short intervals in training or during the event.

Where did you say anything about super hard efforts in your last post. You simply said that he shouldn't do any intervals as they weren't relevant to the type of event he was undertaking. I specifically addressed super hard efforts in my response however intervals aren't only for zone 6 and above. They are very useful in zone 3, 4 & 5 as well. The guy probably doesn't have unlimited hours for training so he is going to have to make the most that time and that means mixing longer efforts with intervals.

You should really understand that the power which you can hold for 5 hours is very intimately related to the power that you can sustain for 1 hour therefore by dragging your sustainable power up you also dragging up the power you can hold over longer periods also. Having said that the longer rides are still very important as they condition the body to deal with the demands of riding that long and indeed mixing intervals into the longer rides can be an extremely useful approach for someone who is tackling a sportive as you can simulate putting in hard efforts at different points in the ride such a long hill towards the back of a sportive.

Team4Luke

I understand that, but there are no short cuts or quick wins even if the OP has limited time available. He is riding events over 5 hrs and the aim for him is to bring that time down which means pacing and averaging out his effort and avoiding high efforts as much as possible that will leave his resources drained.
I agree with one hour power, it is connected to longer distance too, gains can be made here if ridden at the correct intensity, would recommend be included in pretty much training for anything, a very uncomfortable session if done right. However, the OP won't be spending a continuous hour at this level, certainly not at the start unless wishes to suffer blowing up, at the end maybe for the last hour giving it everything but then after 4+ hours in his legs he won't be producing true threshold power/HR at that point. But none the less worth including.
Core of the training should be road miles, Z2/3 over several hours, 2-4 perhaps, again extremely demanding and avoided by many because of it's nature, it is very easy to do intervals instead, I can do them for fun but never look forward to my 1-2hr session which produce bigger and more permanent gains. Intervals have become too fashionable and many get drawn in by them.
I already mentioned doing hill work on his long rides.

the_scattman

Thanks guys for you comments, it's been interesting reading your discussion on the best training. I certainly plan to get out on the road as soon as I can, which hopefully will be this weekend, the weather is getting warming pretty quickly now. I'll do a 3 hr ride, not pushing too hard, but will try and staying within Z3.

I'll be keeping up the turbo session midweek, but I think I'll adjust those slightly, reducing the power output I need, but lengthing the time, I'll probably start with 5 minute intervals, but look to increase these as I improve. Though this leads to the question, how do I monitor my improvements, will it be a reduced HR over the interval, or will be more able the perception of how my feel, ie it gets easier to complete the interval with reduce/no muscle burn.

amaferanga

Team4Luke wrote:

I understand that, but there are no short cuts or quick wins even if the OP has limited time available. He is riding events over 5 hrs and the aim for him is to bring that time down which means pacing and averaging out his effort and avoiding high efforts as much as possible that will leave his resources drained.
I agree with one hour power, it is connected to longer distance too, gains can be made here if ridden at the correct intensity, would recommend be included in pretty much training for anything, a very uncomfortable session if done right. However, the OP won't be spending a continuous hour at this level, certainly not at the start unless wishes to suffer blowing up, at the end maybe for the last hour giving it everything but then after 4+ hours in his legs he won't be producing true threshold power/HR at that point. But none the less worth including.
Core of the training should be road miles, Z2/3 over several hours, 2-4 perhaps, again extremely demanding and avoided by many because of it's nature, it is very easy to do intervals instead, I can do them for fun but never look forward to my 1-2hr session which produce bigger and more permanent gains. Intervals have become too fashionable and many get drawn in by them.
I already mentioned doing hill work on his long rides.

As has already been pointed out, the fact that he may not be riding at threshold much in the event does not mean that training to improve threshold power will not be any use. Doing intervals such as 2x20 at threshold would be very beneficial to increasing speed over an event like this. In combination with a long ride each week he would very likely see much bigger gains in terms of improvements to average speed over the long ride than he would from banging out hour after hour of endurance level rides.

Intervals aren't 'fashionable', they're effective! As long as you don't forget to do the longer rides AS WELL then they work. I've spent the winter doing intervals and longer 'sweet spot' rides at the weekend of up to only 3 hours. Last weekend I rode 100 miles in 5.5 hours fairly comfortably....

Btw if you do intervals 'for fun' then you're not doing them properly.