Training & Nutrition - Heart rate WAY high today

I went out riding today and ran into something I hadn't seen before on the HRM.

I was not even 15km into my ride today when I looked down at the HRM and saw 177! (my max HR is 188, LTH is 175) I wasn't feeling the lactate burn, I didn't even feel like I had been working that hard. I was riding into a decent headwind and just kinda spinning along at 100rpm. I don't normally see 175+ without really pumping it out for a good distance. I can usually ride strong tempos at 165-170.

What are some things that might cause such an abnormally HR? I've not ridden too much this last week. Ride times were something like this:

4/7 - 41.88km, avg HR 162, 34.588kph
4/8 - 50.290km, avg HR 162, 32.29kph
4/9 - 50.08km, avg HR 163, 36.4kph (All out effort, crit laps on a course I know)
4/10- Rollers, 1 hr, avg HR 147, recovery spin (got me out of the living room cause the in-laws are in town)
4/11 - Off
4/12 - Today, 86km, avg HR 165 (average dropped because of a lot of descent time after some pretty steep climbing), 31.1kph

Ate a decent breakfast (bowl of cereal and sticky bun that our neighbors made) 9 hours of sleep last night. I'm just stumped. Maybe dehydrated? I can't think that I was really hydrating any more or less yesterday than I do normally.

VW

Increased temperature, dehydration, humidity, caffeine or other stimulants, emotional stress, illness, time of day, even your head position (like drops vs hoods). All of these things can affect your HR at a given wattage.

You can even get into a feedback loop like...

"hmm my HR is too high" which causes some extra thinking and a little stress; which in turn raises your HR even further.

“Now Its even higher what’s wrong” and so on…

Don’t worry about it if it’s just one occurrence.

48 TOTAL hours out of the saddle. Up the Protein by 4 to 1 for both days. Rehydrate. Your heart is telling you to chill for a bit.

or maybe you just rode near some power lines, electrical fences or electric train tracks.

Ricardo

or maybe you just rode near some power lines, electrical fences or electric train tracks.

Ricardo

++

(or near someone else with a HRM or other interfering device)

If you were at that high of a % of your max, you'd know it, even if you were overtraining (which doesn't seem likely from what you've said). Dehydration is always a potential concern so it wouldn't hurt to up your fluid intake a little bit but that's good advice high HR or not.

A lot of people see "high HR" and automatically jump to the "overtraining!" conclusion, but that's only one symptom of overtraining (and the concern is with a high *resting* HR, not active HR). Do you also feel abnormally fatigued or tired? Have trouble concentrating? Are you irritable or anxious? Depressed? Have headaches? Don't even feel motivated to ride? If so then yeah maybe you should back off for a bit but otherwise I wouldn't worry about it.

Nomad, when you say that your MaxHR is 188, how did you get that number? Did you test it out or is it the number you got from 220-age or some other formula?

The point I'm getting at is that it may not be your actual maximum.