Training & Nutrition - HR questions

Hello,
I am a 35yr old, 5'10", 200lbs, I've been riding a mtb for the past few years, and just recently started riding a road bike('06 Trek 1200), good news is that I have gotten the fit right, no back pain. I do weights twice a week and soccer on sundays.

I ride twice a week with a couple friends and normally the route is about 18 miles averaging around 15mph, we recently did a 45 mile ride averaging 15mph, HR avg 167. My goal is to join a large club ride which is about 50-60 miles and avg speed 19-20mph. I suspect riding in a large group is easier due to draft.

My long range comfort level HR is around 165-170 and I can push to 175 for short periods, but if I cross 180 things shutdown soon after. I suspect 180+ would be my lactate threshold

Am I over/under stressing my HR ? Apart from putting in the miles what can I do to monitor if I am training poorly ?
Unfortunately where I live there are no club rides less than 50-60 miles.

Thanks,

L

I would say it's probably less than 180+ if you're shutting down at that point. You should be able to sustain at or just under LTHR for a little while.

The threads on HR training abound here. You have a couple options to consider when you start wanting to train with HR. Some people train against max HR, which is how I started back in December. After a little bit, I took advice and read Friel's training bible. Now I train on zones based around lactate threshold and get much better workouts. If you want to "train" to improve, I seriously recommend Friel's book. I looked at a couple others but was completely happy with what I got from Friel.

Realistically though, because I'm not training to race, I use my HRM as a limiter more than anything else. I'm riding solely to accumulate miles this year. If I'm going to do a long distance ride, I have a number I try to stay under so that I can maintain my pace for the entire ride. If I'm riding laps or doing "sprint" work, then I try to force the hear rate to a number to get the effective workout.

Measuring lactate threshold isn't really so tough. There's a lot of scientific ways to do it. I find the 40k TT one to be the easiest, and after a couple tries I got a good round number that works for me. Again, I'm not training to race TTs, so my number is only for me. If I take a full out 50k hammerfest, my average HR ends up being around 167 total. My 40k TT rate (only taking the middle 20 minutes) works out to be closer to 174-175, so I'm using 175 as my LTHR.

The other way to see if you're training poorly is to document your training thoroughly. My personal training plan improved greatly once I started documenting it more thoroughly.

Finally, the "how do you feel" test always works for me too. If I start to feel sluggish on the bike for no apparent reason, the reason becomes apparent as overtraining I think. So, I take a little break.