Heart rates during a race?

rhyko7 · September 2009

i am a mountain biker but think you road guys have more knowledge on this subject

i think i understand most of the training heart rate zones, however what heart rates whilst racing is unknown to me?

for instance you will average a higher heart rate for a 1 hour race than a 3 hour race.

i just completed the Brecon Enduro (shorter distance)yesterday with my HR monitor, i tried riding up the gap and my HR went up to about 95% before i got the better of my ego and started walking, i was wandering whether this would have lowerd my pace for the rest of the race, due to using up energy and producing lactic acid.
my average HR% for the whole race was 76%

i guess what im trying to find out is what % HR to try and stay below during a race, and what average HR% to aim for?

so 2 questions:

what average HR% to aim towards or is possible for a:
1 hour race
2 hour race
3 hour race
4 hour race?

what HR% to try and stay below for these durations.

any advice or explantions welcome & appreciated, i am trying to put together a relationship between time riding and heart rates, in order to get the best performance out of myself.
cheers ppl

jibberjim · September 2009

rhyko7 wrote:

i guess what im trying to find out is what % HR to try and stay below during a race, and what average HR% to aim for?

race to percieved effort, don't race to heart rate, too many things can impact your heart rate outside of your ability to actually work. And it varies a lot between individuals. Some peoples threshold reduces quite a bit as they get fatigued, so they get used to 150 HR in training, but because they enter the race fresh, with the fatigue gone, limiting themselves to that same 150 would leave them well off the pace they could have done.

Racing to percieved effort will take time to absolutely nail, and you'll likely have some spectacular failures on occasion, but it will avoid races ruined simply by HR drift.

Also, you cannot have %age of max for different races for everyone, people are different, their "thresholds" are a different %age of max, so you might only be able to hold 80% of max for an hour, whereas another athlete can comfortably hold 90%. The best thing is to collect a lot of data about what you do, and use that to help you train and race.

Bronzie · September 2009

I agree with Jibberjim.............racing to a set HR range is probably not a great idea - certainly not with something as variable as XC mountain-biking. Makes more sense with something a bit more steady state like a flat time trial, but even then HR drift will probably just confuse the issue during the event.

rhyko7 wrote:

what HR% to try and stay below for these durations.

FWIW, I've found from looking back over HR files from this season's road races I've done that if I spend much more than 30 minutes total time above my Lactate Threshold HR (basically the average HR I can sustain for a 10 mile TT), then I'm cooked. But this is no doubt entirely individual to me. It's also not much use knowing this during a race as I can either follow the wheels or I get dropped - what my HR is at the time is of no help.

Anonymous · September 2009

Furthermore, how have you determined your max HR anyway?

rhyko7 · September 2009

cheers guys what you say makes sense, im not sure why i was expecting some sort of HR guide lines per hour or something lol.
i have only just started doing races and am not sure how hard to go, especially on the longer ones, dont want to burn myself out too quickly and thought i could pace it using HR monitor.

for Napolean- i did a horrible progressive treadmill test to find my max HR, i should do it a few times to get an average, but it was nasty to say the least, so the value is close enough for me. then worked out my 5 using the karvonen formula

i gues i will get the feel of how hard to push with experience, but hate finishing and thinking i could have gone much quicker. i think i paced myself well on my last race tho, only put too much effort in on one section and suffered a bit at the end.

i will contunue to use my HR monitor tho as its useful data to use for training.

jibberjim · September 2009

rhyko7 wrote:

i will contunue to use my HR monitor tho as its useful data to use for training.

Definately, looking what happened is part of learning, and can help a bit in a rate, but not as a be-all, just have it as another data point. All data is good! Practice your pacing in training.

Good luck!

oldwelshman · September 2009

I use hr as a guide during races.
I am mostly at 150 to 160 with a max hr of 175 makes my hr approx 88% to 90%.
For the track it is higher than this.
I did do a 3/4 race on weekend and got dropped

an hr was 170 a few times and I seemed to be struggling so I jacked thinking I was fatigued, only to find my front brake on!!
I raced the next race e,1,2,3 deciding to ride for 5 laps to see if it was fatigue ir the brakes

I was fine straight away and had no trouble. Was suprised to see how much difference the brake rubbing made

good training though !!

nolf · September 2009

Agree with others, during a race on the climbs you don't say, well I would react to this attack but it'll just jack my heart rate way up. You do whats necessary and then you try to recover where you can.

In road racing becuase the effects of drafting are so important you have to do whats necessary to stay on someones wheel even if it results in maxing out your heart rate. I find in every race there'll be times when you are absolutely maxing out in every way trying to hold a wheel or get over a hill.

Don't know about MTB, but although pacing yourself is important, I would have thought that for an hour long race you can probably just hammer it the entire way without really worrying about holding yourself back. Recover where you can to catch your breath, but give it everything.

Heart rates during a race?

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