ALLSTOTT

THIS IS NOT A PISSING CONTEST
So i was on the trainer today and noticed my H/R was in the 180's for a good 3 min as i was doing 34mph, the weird thing was i wasnt breathing hard. Is that normal? My overall avg speed was 26.7 and avg h/r was 151 for the 35 minutes.

dennisa

You're just getting more fit

bonz50

Abby Normal!!!

Tunnelrat81

Depend's largely on the brand/style/resistance etc...of the trainer that you're on. Speed numbers don't correspond with anything on a trainer. If you have the equip. for reading wattage on your bike, feel free to compare real world wattage numbers with those on the trainer, but speed and average numbers are completely useless. Some trainers give similar to normal resistance, But the vast majority I think give you significantly lower resistance. Take the speed numbers out of your post and you've told us that you were able to hold a 180 h/r for 3 minutes, nothing more, nothing less.

*edit* Oh, if you really want a clear answer, next time the weather's nice enough to ride outside do the following. After giving yourself a nice long warm-up, make sure you're on perfectly flat ground and that there is no wind, then do a 3 minute long interval at 34 mph and take a peak at your heart rate and note your breathing rate at the 2.5 minute mark. Then report back.

-Jeremy

RacerOne

^^ +1 and completely normal.

caloso

This. And no, it's not abnormal. Good fitness improvement there; that's supposed to be happening.

Psimet2001 

There's a reason we don't include trainer "mileage" in totals.....trainer "speed" is worthless.

ALLSTOTT

thanks for the responses, when the weather permits i'll go find a flat area and see how it compares.

Damn i need to get a power meter.

aham23

/thread.

later.

Jose Mandez

I'm guessing that you're a fairly young person, in good shape, with a high maximum heart rate. Maximum heart rate is roughly equal to 220-(your age in years). "Not breathing hard" is a subjective assessment that basically tells me that you weren't out of breath, which means that, while your heart was working hard, your tissues were probably getting enough oxygen. This indicates that you are well trained, because even though trained athletes have the same maximum heart rate as everyone else when they are operating at a maximum level of exercise, their bodies also use oxygen more efficiently; this is probably why you weren't out of breath.

For me personally, when I get my heart rate up to about 170-ish, I am at a maximal level of exertion at which I am breathing pretty hard, but this could simply be just an individual genetic difference; or maybe it's because I'm not in as good of shape as I should be.

Psimet2001 

correct.

Psimet2001 

hey - come by the training center tonight to ride. I need to shoot the poop and have 2 hours to kill. Then you can swing by the shop and help me build the wheels for this weekend. Punk. BTW - did you notice that there is now a spot on the Elite roster......just sayin...

later.

gregf83 

It's not abnormal. Your HR will generally be higher indoors due to lack of cooling. The heart's cardiac output is equal to stroke volume x HR. The lower the stroke volume the higher the HR for a given cardiac output. As your fitness improves your stroke volume should increase although this may occur over a period of years.

Jose Mandez

"trainer "speed" is worthless."

I wouldn't say that trainer speed is totally worthless; you can adjust an indoor trainer so that it's actually harder to attain a certain speed than it would be on flat, level ground with no wind. If you've got it adjusted right, it could be a decent measure of exertion, if nothing else.

That being said, an indoor trainer gives an entirely different resistance dynamic, since the rolling resistance is being applied to the rear bottom aspect of the rear wheel, rather than to the 180 degree point (i.e. bottom) of each wheel. This gives indoor training ride a certain confined "feel" that makes it certainly less pleasant feeling (at least for me) than actually rolling down an actual road.

Psimet2001 

This has been hashed out a thousand times already. Yes, you can establish a power to speed curve for a specific trainer mounted with your bike with a certain tire and under a certain adjustment and tire pressure. If that curve has been established you can then utilize the speed your wheel is "traveling" at to interpolate the approximate power output you are putting out at that specific time. Heat of the unit, changes in tire pressure or extent to which the resistance unit is pressed against the tire, the type of tire, etc all affect this number greatly. That is why you have to warm up a computrainer for 10-15 minutes BEFORE you can calibrate it for use during that session. If you don't the power output you are putting out can result in drastically different speeds and this is a unit that is accurate enough to be certified for indoor competition (which uses speed).

An average user with no great experience with heavy or structured training, or good experience with perceived exertion, use of a power meter using a regular indoor trainer without an arbitrary adjustment and "whatever tire pressure that was in there" is going to experience WIDE differences in speed that will not correlate to direct changes in power output.

In the end it is about power output, and your body's reaction to that training load/power output.

Training without that is useful of course but training with speed as an indicator of anything on a trainer similar to the situation I listed above is worthless. HRM based training is 1 step better - the OP noted that his HR wasn't where it would normally be at "that speed" leading him to the conclusion that he had miraculously achieved a higher level of fitness quick enough to be noticed instantly on the trainer. If he had listened to what that HRM was saying he would have known something was "off" and should have gotten off the bike and checked to make sure the ire was inflated, that the trainer roller was still up against the tire and that say - if a fluid trainer - that it hadn't sprouted a slow leak or otherwise allowed air into the system or over heated enough to possibly change the viscosity of the fluid......

There's a reason you don't even see speed used in "spin" type of classes either - it is all about gear, load, and/or cadence. Not speed.

I'll say it again...speed is meaningless....less than meaningless on a trainer........unless it's a computrainer and it's been calibrated and you are in a race but then it is only important as a way of determining a winner for the event. it does not translate to the real world.

kleinboogie

^^^ word

On a trainer of any type, power is the only thing that's measurable from session to session. GL

aham23

ha, you got two hours. i only got 90 minutes at some absurb effort level. i wish i had more time so i could spend more time in the holy of holy zone 2.

cant make the studio tonight. i would love too, but cant.

open spot? where are these filled and open spots listed anyway? im too old to be an elite. elitist for sure, but an elite 3, thats just crazy talk. later.

valygrl

If your HR was much higher than usual and you didn't feel like you were working that much harder, I would question the measurement device. Maybe some interference from something in the room? TV, phone, ???

aham23

cooling. question the cooling. when inside on the trainer it all about the cooling. trust me. later.

Jose Mandez

"In the end it is about power output, and your body's reaction to that training load/power output."

Right on. What I used was the "poor college student's power meter" by using the subjective measure of perceived exertion while on the trainer as a guide to adjust rolling resistance up or down so that my "speed" would roughly correlate with the actual speed produce by the same level of exertion while on the road. Once I had it "calibrated" I could use "speed" as a bit more objective measure of my power output by comparing average speed from session to session (provided the tire didn't lose air and all of the other variables you mentioned stayed more or less the same). Perhaps this is a bit crude, and not nearly as accurate as I thought it was (since some variables are going to change at least slightly from session to session willy-nilly), but I guess it's better than just setting up the trainer with the roller barely touching the tire, jumping on and riding at "30 mph" for 1 hour, and glibly proclaiming "Lance Armstrong, eat your heart out."

Of course, as stated before, one never gets the exact training effect as one gets from real riding, since it is difficult to duplicate such things as wind resistance (which becomes an important speed-limiting factor at uber-high speeds), steering, pavement texture, etc.

aham23

not true. with power one can get the exact training effect they desire no matter inside or out. power is power. later.

gregf83 

So motorpacing, hill climbing, drafting is all a waste of time? You definitely don't get the same training effect spending all your time on an indoor trainer with a fixed inertial load.

shovelhd

And time. Miles and speed mean little on a trainer. It's about the amount of work at what cadence for how long.

banerjek

No, holding 34mph for 3 min is not normal. But as has been mentioned, speed is meaningless unless you're actually on the road, Note that if you're not on a fluid trainer, it's important that the resistance unit actually be set to provide some resistance AND be in firm contact with the tire.

I wouldn't be concerned about the HR, though the avg sounds on the low side.

topflightpro

Something else to consider is that other electrical devices often can distort some HR and speed readings.

My max HR is around 185, but whenever I ride by a certain set of powerlines, my HR jumps to 225.