Road Bike Racing - this is UNBELIEVABLE!!

3h54 - Petacchi Riding At 36 Per Cent of Maximum Heart-Rate
The winner of yesterday's stage, Alessandro Petacchi, is riding in the middle of the peloton. His heart-rate is currently 63 beats per minute. His maximum is 201bpm... the shelter he is given by those around him is allowing him to ride at just 36 per cent of his maximum.

these guys are cruising at 30mph like they're at home sitting on the couch!!!! INSANE!!!!

Originally posted by deliriou5
3h54 - Petacchi Riding At 36 Per Cent of Maximum Heart-Rate
The winner of yesterday's stage, Alessandro Petacchi, is riding in the middle of the peloton. His heart-rate is currently 63 beats per minute. His maximum is 201bpm... the shelter he is given by those around him is allowing him to ride at just 36 per cent of his maximum.

these guys are cruising at 30mph like they're at home sitting on the couch!!!! INSANE!!!!

That is amazing - 63bpm is my mid-day heart rate whilst sitting behind a desk! We all know about the benefit of the draft, but I didn't realize it was THAT beneficial.

I'm sitting at my desk in a draft (the window is open)- maybe that's why mine is 60 bpm. :)

The draft is why I volunteered to join the Air Force.

lol

Riding in a pack of sweaty men wearing lycra would not cause MY heart to race. If I were in a peloton of WOMEN, my bpm would be in the 200's.

L8R

Don't forget that these super athlete's have Resting Heart Rates of like 2 beats per minute...they're geneticly amazing!

My Genetics suck for fitness...my RESTING heart rate is like 70 and my metabolism sucks too!

I don't know where you got that piece of information. 63 bmp while racing? I'm sorry, but that's TOTALLY WRONG. Yes, those guys are super athletes, but come on guys, I'd say that anything under 100 in racing conditions (and that's when things are super easy) is almost impossible... but 63!?!?

Sorry, but no way.

- Maurizio

i got it right from the live tour updates.... on www.letour.fr and from yahoo UK sports....

maybe they meant 163???

Oh, since you got it there, it must have been measured in metric...

You have to convert it to english.

:D

What's the conversion factor? Is it different for each nationality - or did they roll it all into one factor for the entire E.U.?

I don't think there's a conversion factor for the heart rate thing- they were kidding around there....

I went to the letour.com site, and I didn't see anything about the heart rate thing. I had to say, I was surprised when I saw those numbers. Even when drafting, to be going that fast, I can't see how one's heart rate could be that low- drafting can help you conserve 20- 30% of your energy tops, but to lead to low heart rate numbers like that.... I dunno.

It looks like a typo there. Or they measured his heart rate right when they took off and didn't do any more measurements after that!

this is from the live feed on the Le Tour site,
I read it this morning and yeah, its pretty unbelievable:
The racing started at 11:48 (after neutral zone) actual
start was at 11:37



13 H 54 - Petacchi Riding At 36 Per Cent of Maximum Heart-Rate
The winner of yesterday's stage, Alessandro Petacchi, is riding in the middle of the
peloton. His heart-rate is currently 63 beats per minute.
His maximum is 201bpm... the shelter he is given by those around him
is allowing him to ride at just 36 per cent of his maximum.

Marty

I still don't believe it-

I bet anything he was getting so much cross talk and interference from the other riders that he was getting an inaccurate reading, and no one took that into consideration.

Not to be down on the guy- I love Italian guys- I'm sure he's a great cyclist. But something was wrong with the recording of his heart rate here.

I think LA resting is 32.

I think LA resting is 32.

It is. I believe the majority of the guys riding in the Tour have resting heart rates in the 30s. But resting heart rate is not ambient heart rate, and it's not the average heart rate during a race.

To be operating at a heart rate of 63 with a resting heart rate in the 30s means he was standing still or sitting on a couch- with all due respect, I just don't think he could possibly have maintained that even if the peloton around him was two hundred men thick and there was absolutely no wind, and the road was completely flat and paved.... if he's maintaining a speed of 30 km/hr, he was certainly expending more energy than a rested, reclining position. Either that, or he's on some kind of drug that's been artificially keeping his heart rate pretty low. I don't even want to go there on that one- everytime someone does well, the first thing people suspect is that doping is involved, and I don't even want to take away from his athletic performance by insinuating that.

Barring doping, the only other explanation that makes sense is that his heart rate monitor went haywire and kerplunk in a sea of other heart rate monitors and biofeedback machinery on the other riders- and that gave an artificial reading that was recorded, and then reported.

If he somehow gets that number again during the Tour, and consistently, then I will actually believe that he can perform at race speed at such a low heart rate. Until then, I remain a skeptic.

I still think he's da man, though....

There was a stat posted on the cycling news site last week which surprised me. They were saying that the average resting heart rate in the tour this year was 50 bpm and the lowest was 31 bpm. I thought that 50 for an average was kind of high because that means that there must be guys in there with RHR in the 70's. I guess I'm fit for the tour too. (lol)

Someone riding in the middle of a rolling pack of 180 riders is not even pedaling. All they're doing is "managing" the speed of their bicycle by a combination of touching the pedals and freewheeling, trying to avoid having to use the brakes and if they do have to use the brakes, just scuffing to modulate speed in a super dynamic situation. Riding in the middle of a peloton is like riding in the eye of a hurricane; there's a whole lot going on around you, but you're in a calm zone.

That changes at the edges or when the peloton decides to chase something or someone, but if the peloton is just rolling along at 30km/hr, the guys in the middle are just sitting in, taking a "rolling nap". I can understand how the heart rate of a super fit cyclist could be way down in that situation.

Then I guess there was no point in them reporting that heart rate, because the implication seemed to be that the guy was in incredible shape and was so incredibly fit that he was able to maintain such a low heart rate in the middle of the race.

I'm sure lots of cyclists in the middle of that peloton had similar heart rates, which made his heart rate that much more unspectacular and unimpressive. If he's just coasting along, barely pedalling, there's no surprise there, and there's no way I would describe his heart rate as "unbelievable".

I'd be interested to know what kind of road he was on when he had this "unbelievable" heart rate- was it paved and smooth, dirt road, was it on a decline or an incline? How much friction was he working with?

Under the right conditions, it's doesn't seem too far fetched. If he's in the middle of 190+ riders on either a dead flat road or a fraction of a percentage downward grade I could see it. It could take as little as 75-85 watts to tool along at 25 to 30 mph in the middle of the pack. heck, he'd barely have to pedal... and isn't that the goal?

I've been in road races where on the straights my HR has dipped down to around 80 at 25+ mph. If the peloton is big enough and the conditions are just perfect, sometimes you hardly have to do a thing. If you take out the hills in my last race, my HR averaged between 115 and 120 with the average speed on the flats well over 25mph.

I guess the conditions were just perfect then, and I would expect that more riders than him had the same heart rate readings- it wasn't newsworthy if it were under conditions like what you stated. However, the way it seemed to be worded was that he was spinnign along in the peloton and he was so super-fit that his heart rate was just 36% max, and he hardly exerted any effort for the win.

I just stress that the heart rate given wasn't worth reporting, as it probably was that several of the riders in the peloton had that kind of reading, and his heart rate was blown way out of proportion and overexaggerated to make it look like winning was a piece of cake... but then again, this is how reporters are, so why should I be surprised at all?

His max hr 201
timetrail 188-192
avg hr during endurance rides 124-128 and watts 245-280.

I don't think it was in the middle of the race.

It was right after they actually started racing, I thought. They may have been going very easy...


Originally posted by Koffee Brown

I just stress that the heart rate given wasn't worth reporting, as it probably was that several of the riders in the peloton had that kind of reading, and his heart rate was blown way out of proportion and overexaggerated to make it look like winning was a piece of cake... but then again, this is how reporters are, so why should I be surprised at all?

Not newsworthy? Why not mention to the viewers, since they may be kind of amazed? Obviously it has created interest here, for example.
They pick Petacchi since he was having such a great tour so far, so obviously he was a popular rider at the moment. I think they were showing his HR as an example for the HR of most of the riders.

Brent, that's what I first speculated. But Marty posted something with the time- something about 1354H. Does that mean it was 1:54pm or does that say how long they were into the race?

I'm not sure at what point in the live feed this happened, so it's difficult for me to pinpoint when in the race they recorded this heart rate, and for how long it lasted.

Originally posted by Koffee Brown
- I love Italian guys-

My grandfather was northern Italian; does that count?;)

We shall see....

;)

Actually yeah that report was given about 80km into the stage.

The peleton was probably riding at around 45km/h at the time.

Originally posted by shokhead
His max hr 201
timetrail 188-192
avg hr during endurance rides 124-128 and watts 245-280.

The endurance numbers on Petacchi are much more telling than a random HR number on a flat stage. 245-280 watts at 125 bpm is an incredible number in my book.

If any of you have trained with a PowerTap or SRM, you know that those are numbers that we mere mortals only dream of.

If Servais Knaven can be in the 60's then Petacchi certainly can.

Image courtesy of www.polar.fi

http://tdf.polar.fi/tourdefrance/img/heart_rates/stage_5_cyclist_1.jpg

Yep, that's exactly what I was thinking- that his heart rate pattern was more like the graph you provided. Thanks for the image, it really does help.

If you look at a typical heart rate chart during a race, you'll see heart rate go very high and very low... heart rate is not constant- it changes frequently, even if you're maintaining a steady pace.

The way letour.com made it sound, it was like this guy was at a constant 63 bpm, which I think is impossible to maintain, however, it would not surprise me to see it deviate up and down throughout the race.

What should have been released is the heart rate monitor chart like the one released here for Knaven. When you see this chart and then consider that heart rate typically will rise and fall during a race, it makes sense that at one point in the peloton, Petacchi's heart rate was 63.

I just think it's bad reporting- overdramatizing something that is pretty common, and if they'd bothered to look at his heart rate during the entire race, they would have gotten a similar heart rate chart as Knaven's.

There are times when I'm working hard and I've seen my heart rate go as high as 221 and as low as 57- but when you put it in perspective with my heart rate overall, it's nothing remarkable or incredible.

http://tdf.polar.fi/tourdefrance/heartrates.html

This site has some heart rate read outs for two riders SERVAIS KNAVEN and SÉBASTIEN HINAULT.

They both have heart rates that dip below 70 while racing but I would imagine this to be on the downhills, not on the flat. If you take a look the dips are very short.

I am still impressed.

CHEERS.

Mark