HMF

I've been taking my resting heart rate every morning that I have a training day planned because Joe Friel told me to. Normal resting heart rate for me is around 41-42, and that's during a training week. If I haven't ridden the bike in a week it'll go down to 39. Today, it was up around 46 because I went for a massive ride 2 days ago, rested yesterday. Then today I found I just didn't have the legs to do 2x20's.

I take it every morning when I wake up - I turn off the alarm, stare at the ceiling for a minute or two while I clear the fog, then take count. I can kinda feel when it's going to be higher than normal, and I took note when I saw it was 46 that I might not be able to do the workout planned. Sure enough, out on the road when I started the first interval, my HR on screen was SUPER sluggish to respond, and I felt like I had dead legs, like I was doing a 3-4 minute V02max interval instead of an SST/Z4 interval. I ended up riding Z1/Z2 for an hour and called it a day.

Anyone else use RHR for anything? Any tips/tricks/wisdom to share?

rkwaki

Tells me that I am alive...

I have never used it for much but then again I don't look at it often.
When I was training/racing I had a very low resting (mid 30's or lower upon waking, 40 while sitting at my desk working).

If it stays particularly high you may be burnt out a little but everyone is different.

chasm54

Yes, I check it. If it is more than a few beats above normal I'll tend to back off slightly that day if, as in your case, the higher HR is accompanied by my feeling a bit more tired or stressed than usual.

FWIW, I have recently started using this. I didn't buy it, they're one of my team's sponsors. It purports to estimate stress (either from training, or illness or whatever) by measuring HR variability - the stressed heart shows less variability in rate between inhaling and exhaling, apparently. And despite my initial scepticism, it appears to work pretty well, giving high readings when I'm well rested and dropping the morning after a hard session. So it might be a useful addition if you're worried about overtraining.

sstang13

And I though I was fit at low 50's.. I just look at it sometimes to judge my fitness level or how my heart is (nothing crazy going on in there). I've had it down to low 70's while riding though.

mattm

What do you do on race day if the resting HR says you need to back off that day?

rkwaki

Drope da hamma, dial it up to 400 watts and get them guads going...

chasm54

LOL. As it happens, that was me, yesterday. I raced anyway, badly. But I think the point is to use it to help manage your training load so this is less likely to happen...

HMF

I'm really interested in HRV. Sounds pretty neat.

Race anyway? Entry fee's been paid bro. I get what you're saying - it's just one metric in the bigger picture.

thechemist

Hmm, I need to re-read a few articles by friel it seems. Mine hovers in the upper 30s lower 40s but I haven't really thought much of my heart rate off the bike. It is very interesting that you see a correlation.

Looigi

I use my resting heart rate for watching TV, sitting at my desk, sleeping, etc.. I use my higher heart rates when more physically active. On a fast group ride the other day I used my max heart rate a couple of times, but not for long.

sstang13

What's your average heart rate?

rkwaki

Really doesn't matter as everyone's physiology is different. I have a friend whose resting is something like 28 but his max is in the 160's.
My resting is a little higher but my max is way higher..

spectastic

I just measured my heart rate at 40, but my heart rate monitor never reads below 60 for some reason. sometimes, it's stuck at something ridulous, like 54 while I'm pedaling hard, or 164 when I'm on a cool down. And there's always a lag time of like 10 seconds before anything changes. I would take it off, but my watch would still read 94 for a while. I mean I don't see how I can wear it wrong. Does this mean my heart rate monitor is crappy? This is it https://www.amazon.com/Polar-FT1-Hear.../dp/B005VPBG0M

Also yesterday, I did a 45 mile ride. When I was doing intervals in the first 20, my heart would be in the 170s consistently, and climb up to upper 190s on my hard sprints. But on my way back, no intervals, but I did pedal hard. My HR stayed mostly below 170. I had to pedal pretty hard to get it up to 174. Was this because my legs weren't able to keep up, or was I dehydrated?


I lied, my HR is more like 46. Forgot to breathe the first time.

mattm

Actually I wasn't trying to say anything really, just curious.

shovelhd

Resting HR doesn't mean a lot to me, and I don't vary my training because of it. HR .vs. power means a whole lot to me. Discussed in another thread.

sstang13

This was sarcastic, but while on the topic: I find my average speed is higher when my HR is lower. Did Lance Armstrong win 7 tours because he had a resting HR of 27 (apparently)?

justadude

I see resting heart rate as one sign of whether I'm fully rested.

chasm54

It wasn't sarcastic. Everyone's physiology is different, like he said. Endurance athletes tend to have low resting HRs because their stroke volume - the amount of blood pumped with each beat - increases. But their max and average HRs are pretty much irrelevant, they vary massively between individuals that are similarly fit/fast.

People don't win tours because of their resting HR.

Racer Ex 

And his heart was 50% larger than a normal persons. And he never used PED's. Blah blah blah.

There was a huge amount of BS PR hype with that guy. He won 7 tours because he doped his ass off and the only real opposition was addicted to strudel and Ecstasy.

Resting heart rate is useful as noted above. I find that with a power meter and good software, after you have enough data points and history it's a bit redundant. Without those tools it would be a good thing to track in a training diary and note if you start to correlate variances with performance.

revchuck 

Mine's in the mid-40s. That caused concern when it was checked prior to my prostate biopsy a year ago - apparently, a healthy 60-year-old's resting HR is supposed to be ~65.

YMCA

Resting HR is only an indicator if you "understand" it and can "feel" your own personal body signals.
I'd avoid using it for anything, other than to make sure you are alive.

Back in the 90's when HR was the rage, I checked it all the time.
Really never mattered.
I'd have good days as long as I was in a rhythm.

sstang13

My question was, I was mocking the 'what's your average speed crap' But ya I'm not trying to take anything away from this, there is something to be said about HR.

I never check mine, I try to sometimes but usually I either have a hard time finding it, end up doing something to raise it before I check it, or forget which is what I do best. I have a lot of things to worry about in my life/cycling before my resting heart rate though..

chasm54

Typical freaking doctors. They think average is synonymous with healthy.

echappist

yep.

if i cared enough, i can usually tell how good a workout i'll have within 25 minutes (20min warm up and 5min threshold effort "blow out" effort). If i'm well rested and on good form (and assuming the temp is below 70F, etc, etc), i should be slightly below LTHR after 5min. If i'm tired, it'll be up to 15 bpm below LTHR after 5 min; though at that point, my legs would have a hard time turning the pedals at 95-100 rpm (my optimal range). Except i don't really care enough and often note these things only after a workout.

In terms of most idiotic to slightly less idiotic pissing contests, avg HR/rest HR > avg speed > avg power/ftp.

grolby

A low resting HR is correlated to fitness, sure, but fairly loosely given all of the other factors that influence it. And the relationship between it and what you see riding is pretty meaningless, it has more to do with what your LTHR is. My RHR is somewhere in the mid-upper 40s, but I have to be going extremely slow - as in, barely even pedaling - to see a HR reading lower than 100 on the bike. It doesn't matter, it just so happens that my LTHR is up around 185, so I run on the fast side of average.