A question about MHR...

dilatory

So early on in summer I did a MHR test. All through summer I was averaging 200+ miles a week. Usually 250+. Never once did I exceed this MHR. On balls out hill climbs. On TTs. In chaingangs etc. Even a few hill climb events. Last couple of weeks I've been busy so haven't been out as much as I like to, coupled with shorter evenings, I got a CX bike the other week so been smashing that around a bit.

Today, forecast was dreadful and fancied a bit of early morning off-road fun so took the CX bike on a club ride after getting it nice and muddy. Was windy as hell. I like to sit on the front on club rides because no-one else wants to and it's a great way to get some quality work out of them. Anyway; knobbly tyres, heavier bike and lots and lots of wind meant today was a hard day.

My MHR a couple of times today was 5bpm higher than everything through summer. Is this because I've been off the ball? I've never seen it go so high outside of garmin strap being crazy.

explosifpete

have you looked at your resting heart rate? could be an early sign of a cold if its constantly 5/10 beats higher than normal

dilatory

That's interesting. My Mrs has been full of cold the last couple of days. Didn't even think about that. Would it push my MHR up though, or just resting?

imposter2.0

The most important factor is how you felt while you were hitting that number. Without knowing how you established your original MHR in the first place, then it's difficult to speculate.

Having said that, if you can rule out erroneous readings, then set it as your new max HR figure.

dilatory

Original MHR came from a series of increasing intensity hill reps, a way I'd read to attain MHR. Like I say, I've hit this HR before on hill climbs / sprints and sat there for a few seconds about to blow. Today I felt the same way, like I was about to blow up if I didn't ease off. Other guy on the front agreed. Just seems 5 BPM higher than I normally expect, nothing felt out of the ordinary other than the Garmin registering a higher HR than I expected.

BeaconRuth

It's just another example of how unreliable and variable HR can be. Don't worry about it. Sounds like you might have been very 'fresh' and well rested and that's often when people find their HR goes unusually high

I'm not even sure there is such a thing as one, fixed MHR for everyone. It changes over the years any, it's extremely hard to measure and in a series of identical tests in the same state of health and fitness I reckon you could get differences of +/-5bpm easily. Some days it just goes higher. Some days it doesn't.

I'd switch to using the higher MHR figure for setting your (very broad) training zones and crack on. In reality the difference it makes to your training should be very minor indeed.

Ruth

ric/rstsport

dilatory wrote:

So early on in summer I did a MHR test. All through summer I was averaging 200+ miles a week. Usually 250+. Never once did I exceed this MHR. On balls out hill climbs. On TTs. In chaingangs etc. Even a few hill climb events. Last couple of weeks I've been busy so haven't been out as much as I like to, coupled with shorter evenings, I got a CX bike the other week so been smashing that around a bit.

Today, forecast was dreadful and fancied a bit of early morning off-road fun so took the CX bike on a club ride after getting it nice and muddy. Was windy as hell. I like to sit on the front on club rides because no-one else wants to and it's a great way to get some quality work out of them. Anyway; knobbly tyres, heavier bike and lots and lots of wind meant today was a hard day.

My MHR a couple of times today was 5bpm higher than everything through summer. Is this because I've been off the ball? I've never seen it go so high outside of garmin strap being crazy.

Paradoxically, max HR decreases with increased levels of aerobic fitness and increases with decreased levels of fitness.

On the other hand if your fitness is low (i.e., a normal bod) and you try to ascertain HRmax having done little bike training, it's highly likely that as your fitness increases (to a point) your HRmax will increase as you overcome peripheral fatigue. Then, after that my first sentence will apply.

HRmax also varies across different exercise modalities e.g., in untrained people running HRmax > cycling HRmax > swimming HRmax, but in trained cyclists HRmax (and VO2max) >running HRmax>swimming HRmax.

there are also daily differences due to changes within your physiology and how you feel of like several or more b/min.

Ric