There's not much to tell really because your body does all the work. So you simply follow the programme each week using the HRM to stay within specific heart rate ranges. Over time you will start to see your average training speed increase while your HR does not (if you have a decent training programme and the will to follow it, that is!). Welcome to adaptation, which is what training is for.

Your waking HR is an indicator of stress, so you need to determine what is normal (over a 5bpm range). I watch or record for 5mins and take the average of the middle 3 minutes. Alcohol, sickness, and insufficient sleep will screw up this reading. So it's a good idea to record how you feel, how many hours of sleep you've had, and other external influences like medication, alcohol, or stress levels. When you're diarising stuff its for you, not you coach so be honest.

If your waknig HR is more than 5bpm over normal (that's 10% if your normal HR is 50bpm) then its time to take it easy, and if you're sick or stressed maybe stay off the bike altogether.

When you start using your HRM it's very useful to use it to find your optimal cadence on the flat. That's where your HR stays lowest at a given speed over (say) 1km. When you're really suffering in a race it pays to be able to pedal with maximum efficiency. You can even recover a little bit by spinning at your OC.

When climbing on the pegs it's hard to read your HRM, so work out how to do it and practice. You need to be on the lookout for HR spikes on long, high intensity climbs especially when you're a climbing dunce like me. Climbing at 95% for 10mins can be OK. Spiking from 80% to 95% in 100m is definitely unhealthy, and should be good enough reason to back off until you are in a more manageable range.

HRM's are useless for power (ie. short) intervals unless you can download the data later. Let me qualify that by saying that you have to use a HRM during the recovery periods to make sure you don't let your HR fall too low. But you simply can't read a HRM at max effort. For that reason it's better to use distance based intervals.

Conversely, you rely on the HRM totally when you are doing long intervals (20min efforts at AT) to keep you in your target range. The HRM is usually the trigger for more effort as you get tired.

I think that covers most of the basic HRM crap. The other guys might have some more useful stuff.