Old 06-15-12, 11:12 AM
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jwible
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My heart rate has me concerned -- advice?

Some other teammates and I have been on a summer endurance / base kick the past couple of weeks. Mainly to prevent burnout but also to work on our CV efficiency with regards to faster recovery times. I'm the only one using power so the other guys are using HR zones as their training gauges.

So, we've all been calling out our HRs a bit just to get a feel for where everyone is in their zones and make sure nobody is working too hard. Mainly it's out of curiosity. Some guys tool along at 125-145. One guy younger than me likes 145-160. Then my old butt is rolling along at 165-170 when everyone else is around 145-150.

That got me thinking. I've been training for the last three years. Not a long time in the grand scheme of things, but I think it's enough to impact my HR a good bit. Especially resting or at endurance levels. But I'm not seeing the reduced HR I would expect.

Prior to getting back into shape and training I did have high cholesterol. Never enough for meds, and I figure it has to have gone down since I started training, but I don't know for sure.

I also had an almost deadly pneumonia encounter 12 years ago that basically plugged up the upper half of my right lung with MRSA. I assume it was MRSA at least because the docs were calling it Non Vancomycin Resistant Staph Aureous. Which, as far as I can tell means MRSA. There was definite scaring from the infection in that lung that showed up at least two years later on a follow up CT.

I find myself hitting the redline on climbs and in fast pace lines in rolling terrain much sooner than everyone else. Maybe it's my conditioning. But my real concern is that my heart is overworking possibly due to the lagging cholesterol issues and that my lung function is possibly reduced from the pneumonia. But without a baseline I can't really compare the lung function as to what it was prior.

My resting HR is around 60 at this point. And my jra rate is in the mid 140s. But when I push to power based endurance levels it goes to the low to mid 160s and then at FTP levels mid to high 170s. With an anaerobic peak somewhere in the mid 180s. I think I've seen low 190s once or twice in the last two years but after that I'm too fried to recover enough to get more work in.

Now, do those zones sound reasonable or are my endurance and FTP HRs unusually close to each other? I know it depends on where in the zone I am but in general should I expect more of a delineation between mid endurance and on the FTP rivet?

My plan is to find a cardiologist who can also do a peak flow test and stress test to monitor how everything is looking at mid to full load. That is, unless anyone has another recommendation for getting the heart and lungs evaluated performance wise.
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