bbbean 

Why did you attack so early in the race?

Andy STi

You all have little bird hearts! Smaller stroke volume means a faster heart rate to maintain cardiac output. Keep training and your heart may get bigger and your HR may decrease.

caloso

Did anyone mention not looking at it during a race?

grolby

That's really reading too much into it. Some riders may well have high stroke volume and a fast HR. There's no correlation that I've ever heard between race results and LTHR. My average HR in crits is, as far as I can tell, similar to what it was six years ago, but I'm a lot fitter now. There are plenty of other strong riders I know with LTHR of 185 or greater, and others in the 170s or even 160s.

grolby

I assume you're being sarcastic, but I mentioned this mostly to dismiss it. "Don't look at HR in a race" is one of those one-size-fits-all bits of advice. Apparently a lot of people let themselves get psyched out by seeing their HR. But with a little bit of knowledge, or just a cool head, it's not a big deal and it can give some rough information on how well you're doing at conserving energy. Currently my "Race" screen displays 10" power, HR, time, speed and distance. For me, having the performance data there doesn't hurt me and could conceivably help me, like if I want to pace a solo effort. Mostly I just ignore it. I'm sure it does help some people to put tape on their screen or whatever, but I'm not one of those people.

globecanvas

You people with all of your garmin fields. Get old like me and you won't display HR because you can't see the tiny numbers if you have more than 2 fields on the screen!

hack

I have a newish fancy Garmin and I don't even display HR. I don't do much with it, but I still record it. My screen is too busy being cluttered up with other important metrics like sunset time, max speed, and power efficiency.

Doge

So that you don't so much confuse the OP :-)

There are guys in the Pro Tour that have HR that vary as much as 20 beats. Davis Phinney used to run about 20 below those he raced with. But as mentioned comparing HR to others does not work. Comparing range from resting to peak I used to think meant something, but when my kid started rowing he could bring his HR way higher than he ever could cycling and HR really was not his ceiling. I think he just didn't have the legs to drive his cardio.

The two measure we could/do get from HR are:
-Rest. Morning HR indicates rest level.
-Fitness. The time (the slope of the right side of the graph at peak) it took to go from high HR to low HR, again and again is a good indicator of fitness. As is how low it goes.
So in a an early season, less fit crit it might go 190, 150 then 5 min later 190 155, then 5 min later 190 160. Anyway the lower number increase as fatigue set in. Typically after the 45 min mark. As fitness improves that lower number will not increase so fast. A RR over longer time starts bringing up the valleys again.

Hermes

I am glad that Doge wrote something that is not confusing.

Doge

Want pictures?

Heathpack 

All the better.

Heathpack 

And some pie charts please.

PepeM

Or just some pie.

Heathpack 

Mmm. Pie.

Doge

I'm looking for some from my wife and me just to be different, but Daniel is easier. I have to deal with some 900 records, but I remember a few. Got to find them (see attached).
Wife was good (also see attached) Caspers 45 min win (Davis) was one of her last races before I talked her out of racing and into the wife thing - I guess I'm also good - :-)

Anyway that data is harder to get if using something different than my kid. However, while no graphs or pie charts I have about 3,000 workout records electronically, double that from logs. Give me a day, otherwise I go to Daniel - again.

Doge

Here is a good HR graph of fatigue setting in. You can see in the HR graph the lows become higher and the highs get lower as fatigue sets in.
Also the first recovery shows a steep drop in HR. By the 3rd, the drop is not as steep. As the rider gets fitter you'd see the gaps narrowing further in the race. As I mentioned, a crit is pretty short to see this.

bbbean 

And smaller words. Maybe a break for snacks in the middle.

Racer Ex 

First, HR is an indicator of the number of beats per minute your heart is beating. See above. The end. Your body will let you know when you're done much more accurately than a HRM. Use the search engine here and you'll find multiple threads on this topic.

If you find yourself out of breath, you need to improve your aerobic capacity. If your legs load up you need to improve lactic tolerance. If the legs get tired you need to improve muscular endurance.

You'll find that if you stick with the sport your limiter will move around the three points above. Each can require a different type of training to improve the limiter. Use the search engine here and you'll find multiple threads on this topic.

briandelmo

This is my second year just racing bikes. I have 5 years of triathlon before this. Steady power is there, it's the multiple jumps in racing that tend to wear me out. My legs tend to feel great just my lungs recovering from all the spikes tend to kill me later on. I have done a few longer circuit races that are around an hour and I tend to do a lot better than the 20 minute cat 5 crits. I'm hoping the longer 40 minute crits will suit me better but I don't know for sure.

Doge

I didn't think the HR was about telling you when you were done. I thought it was about telling you when you had more to give, or were giving too much.
As with most things an experienced person can guess pretty well. It is very common for the less experienced to get into debt they can't get out of and HR can help with that.

Racer Ex 

Strong tri folks are generally considered awesome lead out or tempo riders that are easy to break by those spikes you described. As the races get longer you'll keep making the selections and, if you don't take a solo flyer at a well picked moment, continue to get broken down at the end by a lot of folks that you'd destroy in a 20 or 40 km TT.

In the sport you came from endurance kills. In the sport you're entering speed kills. 0-5 minute stuff. Work on it, especially the 0-1 minute stuff. If you can get separation, you can use that big motor to your advantage. On and barely off efforts...the off effort you're pushing as hard as you can while still very slightly recovering.

HR tells you where you were, not where you are. It's also highly variable as has been discussed ad nauseam here. Using it as a tachometer redline is something I've seen too often used as an excuse not to push physical and mental limits. Without a lot of experience, and the certainty that you're within the usual delta, and constant monitoring of the numbers, seeing your HR is "X" tells you that and not much more; you don't know if you can sustain "X" for 5 seconds or 5 minutes. It has utility in later analysis, but not in the immediacy of most races, where it comes down to the Yoda "do or not do".

carpediemracing 

Fixed that for you.

Clipped_in

That describes me exactly.

I hear Froom's max HR by the end of the TdF is around 160...

shovelhd

I'm 58 years old and my max HR is 193. HR numbers don't mean **** to anyone but you. Just like power.

What Ex wrote is 100% on the money. I find that people that don't do well in crits don't do the work to do well in crits. FTP only gets you so far.