Originally Posted by
dleccord
I recently did a hill climb and I was at the point of pulling over to rest. My heart rate on that hill was 197. Is this max heart rate or LT heart rate? And when I ride in zone 2, what happens when I accidentally dip into zone 4 or zone 5 for a second?
It may be close to your max HR. LTHR is different. This is how I estimate max HR for the purpose of setting HR zones. It's not precise because it's pretty hard to actually hit a max HR without passing out. If you think this was about as hard as you could go then you might be close. Maybe 205 is a good estimate. Use the formula posted above to calculate zones. If you are using a Garmin, Garmin Connect will do this for you and sync it to your device.
As for not staying in zone 2 on a training ride I don't think anything happens. In fact, I've read that it's good at times to do 10 min hard efforts every hour of a zone 2 ride. It's pretty hard to hold a certain HR for a long period of time. I go more for average.