nick779

Hey guys,

I recently purchased a bike and have been riding it pretty regularly weather permitting, my longest ride to date is 32 miles in around 2:15, and that was because of saddle pain that I had to stop. I just bought an Edge 500, speed/cadence sensor, and a HR strap to start some basic training with.

Ive been reading blog posts, and numerous websites trying to figure out the easiest way to find your Max heart rate to estimate your zones. Most places start by saying to use your 15 mile TT pace, and frankly I dont have a 15 mile TT pace. Ive just ridden and done the best that I could on the short climbs I have available and try to pace myself up them so I dont run out of steam at the top.

Is there a beginner friendly way of finding your max heart rate?
The closest thing I can find is this one which is what I might try "Warm up thoroughly for at least 15 minutes. On a long, steady hill start off fairly briskly and increase your effort every minute. Do this seated for at least five minutes until you can’t go any faster. At this point get out of the saddle and sprint as hard as you can for 15 seconds. Stop and get off the bike and immediately check your HR reading. This is your max HR." Bikeradar
Otherwise, the majority of calculators point me to 188-190bpm.


Lastly, does anyone have a newbie friendly training guide? Or does it not matter what order I do things at this point?

For instance tues/thurs doing 1 hr sessions of sprints (5min warm-up and then 4-6 30sec sprints with 4-5min rest.)
and on my Sat or Sunday ride doing a 2-3 hour zone 2 session.

Kindaslow

It does not matter all that much right now. Get out and ride. Keep track of some stats, miles, time, elevation, whatever. But, do not worry about it, just get out and ride. Keep reading about training, and thinking about what you want for yourself. It will become more and more clear, as time passes. Last, do not forget to enjoy yourself.

Carbonfiberboy 

Don't try to find your max HR. Instead, ride up as long a hill as you can find and push hard until you start to pant uncontrollably. Hold that for a bit, then back off until you stop panting and are just breathing deeply and fast. Use the HR you can hold there as your lactate threshold heart rate (LTHR) until you can get more experience and establish it more accurately. But that will do for now. Then base your zones of your LTHR:
Joe Friel's Quick Guide to Setting Zones | TrainingPeaks

nick779

I did this and hit that "panting" level at about 170bpm, for being 26 years old that seems kinda low isnt it?

Carbonfiberboy 

Never compare your HR numbers to someone else's or to some standard; every one is individual. It is what it is.

Athens80

The variations of 220-Age to calculate your maximum heart rate are not reliable for individuals. Though there are correlations for the median maximum heart rates of the entire population.

Road Fan

Check out How To Determine Maximum Heart Rate by Sally Edwards. It gives several methods from the hard ones to the easy ones.

Drew Eckhardt 

Don't. Training intensities need to be defined in terms of anaerobic (your lactate threshold heart rate) and aerobic thresholds which vary too much as a fraction of maximum heart rate for it to be useful.

Estimate your lactate threshold heart rate by riding as hard as you can for 30 minutes and taking the average over the last 20.

Or use Chris Carmichael's alternate zone system built around a pair of 8 minute maximal efforts that are easier to accommodate mentally and logistically.

https://trainright.com/cts-field-test...-calculations/

RR3

1. Ride 5 times per week
2. Once per week do intervals of 6-8 minutes as hard as you can for the duration of the interval. Start with three intervals. This ride would normally take under one hour.
3. Four times per week go for moderately paced rides of 1-2 hours. The pace should be hard enough that you are aware of increased effort but not so hard that you cannot carry on a conversation or at least get several sentences out.

After 4-6 weeks, take one of the moderate rides per week and start increasing the time duration to make it your long ride. Do not increase your time or miles by more than 10-15% per week.

Take an easy week (50-60% of normal miles/time) once in a while.....say every 3-4 weeks.

Make sure you get to sleep by 10 pm.

The above should be good for the first 3-4 months, then, you can get fancy with power meters, HRM, and other stuff.

GatsbyGlen

I came across the same article the other day while looking for information on training, how to increase speed, heart zone training, etc. So much to learn. I'm brand new as well, starting riding in March at the age of 42. Right now, I mix up my rides between high intensity and cruising speeds. Last week I had 4 rides where I tried to give almost all, but not quite. What I found is that my heart rate is in the high zone most of the time (see pic). This week I'll try some Zone 2, but that will feel awfully slow I think? At any rate, I'm just enjoying the outdoors while getting fit at the same time.

Great nuggets of information in this thread. Thanks!

chasm54

This isn't optimal, for training purposes. In the first place the biggest bang for the buck in terms of aerobic fitness gains happens in the high end of zone2 - counterintuitive, I know, but that's where you get the best balance between challenging your system and being able to keep going for a long time. In addition, fitness comes with training and recovery, not just with training alone. If you spend most of your time in zone 4 you'll just get fatigued, and eventually your performance will actually decline because your muscles aren't getting the opprtunity to recover and respond by overcompensating for your previous efforts. You can recover adequately from a Z2 ride overnight, but it might take two or three days for your system to adapt after going hard.

The old pros didn't have powermeters or even HR monitors, but experience taught them that they trained most effectively by putting in many hours of long steady (not slow) distance - LSD - and building in relatively brief periods of high intensity. Your best plan is to spend most of your time in Z2 and maybe 15% of your training time going very hard, doing intervals or whatever, with a rest/recoverybday scheduled after your interval session.

it may, at first. But the more time you spend there, the faster you'll find you are able to go at that HR.

GatsbyGlen

Thanks for the feedback. I went back and looked at an older ride, a metric century I did in May (65 miles). That ride (at least it felt) was a slower pace, and yet it shows I was in Zone 4 & 5 a majority of the time. During that ride, and the ones last week, I don't feel as if I'm gasping for air or running out of breath (except on one certain climb). Perhaps I should double check my HR monitor from Garmin.

I'll try some lower intensity this week, keeping track of my HR as I go along on the ride.

bassplyr

This brings up a dilemma I have with this whole "ride for long Zone 2" advice. Many of us don't have unlimited time to ride. Typically, I have a fixed amount of time to ride on any given day. If one doesn't have the time to ride 2-4 hours at zone 2, then what is the best regime if you have 60-90 minutes per ride?

RR3

I am looking into that question right now and intend to buy Carmichel's book...The Time-Crunched Cyclist.

I currently ride 20-30 hours/week but come September, I am only going to have 6-8 hours per week assuming I decide to return to the working world for a while.

I am thinking that one 3 hour ride on the weekend plus two 90 minute rides of intensity during the week and then one easy fun ride per week IF it fits timewise. Probably 100 miles per week but considering my base fitness, I can probably do three intensity workouts per week and sort of maintain some level of fitness but there is no real substitute for volume.

chaadster

Sweet spot. I don't know if it works without power, but it is usually defined as 85-90% of threshold power. You'll still need to have a training plan that is suited to your abilities and which targets varying performances, but doing sweet spot work is very beneficial.

I only do two, hour-long training sessions per week, both on the stationary so I can hit my power targets predictably, and both at sweet spot intensity for the hour overall, including warmup/cool down. The workouts still target specific performances, e.g. low cadence work or L6 intervals, etc., but are built to net about 87% of threshold power in the end.


In addition to the training sessions, I do a 1.5hr high intensity road ride and a 3hr medium-low intensity ride each week. I usually don't take a power meter out for those, as they're fun group rides and the main goal is to use what I build in training for fun...fast fun...on the road. Having the right ride mates ensures I get the work in, though, and trains skills like pack riding, drafting, pace lining, sprints and high speed lead-outs.

So, in total, I do 4 rides for 6-7hrs per week. Not a lot by the standards oft advocated around here, but enough to keep my 220lb, 45yr old butt in the top 10% of performance riders around here (looking at my Strava rankings via VeloViewer, but also knowing who I ride with and who's who on the scene). The point being that, with the right training plan, one can still be a very capable cyclist on few training hours.

I also think that getting hooked up with a club is a great way to optimize your time, as the right people not only push you to ride harder, they also open avenues for riding more. You'll be aware of events, and as friendships grow, you'll have a pool of people to call, and calling you, to go on rides.

chasm54

I've done Carmichael's time-crunched program when I needed to get fit fast after missing weeks of training through injury. It works, but it is also a recipe for burnout, I could barely complete the program before I had to back off for three weeks or so to recover. I'd suggest that if you are going to do it, you do so only to target a race or other event for which you need to be competitive, on the basis that you can rest or regroup afterwards. Some of his interval sessions are useful, and I've incorporated them into my usual routine, but they're no more interesting than many of those described in the road racing forum here.

To be fair to Carmichael, he acknowledges that there's no substitute for volume and that if people have the time, they'd be better off with a more conventional regimen. In your case, if you've been riding 20/30 hours per week you'll have a huge base, and I'd reckon you could retain a very high level for quite a while on eight or so hours a week as long as you use the time well. One three hour steady ride, one hour at tempo, a couple of interval sessions, I'd say that would keep you in pretty good shape until your time constraints eased again.

bassplyr

I have tried the Carmichael program a couple of times and it is pretty intense and I couldn't sustain the intensity for the whole program. At 62 YO my goals are to continue to lose weight, improve fitness and continue to enjoy and look forward to cycling. It seems like I do best with a hard 60-75 min ride once/wk. and 3-4 moderate intensity rides in the 60-90 minutes. Racing, centuries, etc. are not in my program.

Roger

chasm54

In that case, if I were you I wouldn't bother with HR or power at all. You know what hard feels like, you know what easy feels like, and just having a good time and mixing it up a bit will keep you fitter than 90% of your peers. The rest is just data.

Drew Eckhardt 

Your zones are defined wrong - the 220 - age maximum heart rate rule is only accurate for populations, with two standard deviations out +/- 24 bpm from that. Even knowing your actual maximum heart rate doesn't help because anaerobic and aerobic thresholds vary too much as fractions of it and change with training - my lactate threshold heart rate went from 88 to 91% of mine after 5000 easy miles.

Ride as hard as you can sustain for 30 minutes, take your average heart rate over the last 20 minutes, and that's approximately your lactate threshold heart rate. Use Joel Friel's zone definitions

Z2 81%
Z3 90%
Z4 94%
Z5a 100%
Z5b 103%
Z5c 106%

although at Z5a and beyond it takes too long for your heart rate to catch up to your power output for averages over the short intervals possible to be meaningful.

If you lack the space or fitness for that you can use Chris Carmichael's zone system defined with a pair of 8 minute all-out efforts.

CTS Field Test Instructions and Training Intensity Calculations - CTS

oliphant

This advice needs to be embroidered and framed.

GatsbyGlen

Thanks for the tip, Drew!

Drew Eckhardt 

If you're not trying to build endurance for a very long event on very little training -

7-10 minute intervals as hard as you can one day a week. Stop when you can't ride at a supra-threshold pace. Rest 2-5 minutes between them. Riding easier doesn't stress your lactate system as much so anaerobic threshold improvements are limited. Empirically 3x10 seemed to work best for me. Data from Stephen Seiler's experiments showed supra-threshold worked better than sub-threshold, and 4x8 better than 4x4 or 4x16 all "as hard as possible" with 2 minutes rest. He suggested 7-10 minutes as the sweet spot for intensity on slowtwitch.com.

As long as you can manage below your aerobic threshold the rest of the week. That's a talking pace generally somewhere in Friel's zone 2, although you can raise your aerobic threshold with training. Riding harder causes your body to draw more from your lactate system so you don't train your aerobic system.

This is polarized training - 20% of sessions above your anaerobic threshold (AnT, lactate threshold), 80% below your aerobic threshold (AeT), although some of Seiler's experiments had two hard days a week.

Use rest weeks with reduced intensity. 1 in 4 is traditional, although some athletes (especially masters) need 1 in 3. Rest weeks are needed for your body to adapt and to maintain freshness.

I fell into the naive trap of riding "hard" "lots" when I was approaching 40 and figured I shouldn't be slow which translated into a lot of sweet spot. A few months actually riding hard intervals got me 20% more power, and enough zone 2 produced a 4-hour endurance pace I previously struggled to maintain for 40 minutes.

The reduced intensity was also better for weight - instead of leveling out at around 185 pounds as I added an extra hard day and my easy rides turned into tempo I lost another 45-50 and weigh less than I did in high school. Lower intensities draw from your fat stores instead of depleting your glycogen stores which makes you hungry (runners call the ravenosity following hard runs "runger").

GatsbyGlen

So I tried something basic last night, a short ride geared at 50x20, 85 rpms for 45 minutes; 12.5 miles. Average heart rate was significantly less than previous rides. It wasn't a hard ride, but I could have pushed harder - I tried to maintain 85 and keep an eye on heart rate. Thankfully I have trails here with minimal interruption and consistent weather.

Based on the guide, it felt somewhere in between Tempo and Steady State (RPE between 6 and 7). But what do I know - I'll just mix things up during the week, rather than trying to do the same thing