Originally Posted by
Andy STi
You all have little bird hearts! Smaller stroke volume means a faster heart rate to maintain cardiac output. Keep training and your heart may get bigger and your HR may decrease.
So that you don't so much confuse the OP :-)
There are guys in the Pro Tour that have HR that vary as much as 20 beats. Davis Phinney used to run about 20 below those he raced with. But as mentioned comparing HR to others does not work. Comparing range from resting to peak I used to think meant something, but when my kid started rowing he could bring his HR way higher than he ever could cycling and HR really was not his ceiling. I think he just didn't have the legs to drive his cardio.
The two measure we could/do get from HR are:
-Rest. Morning HR indicates rest level.
-Fitness. The time (the slope of the right side of the graph at peak) it took to go from high HR to low HR, again and again is a good indicator of fitness. As is how low it goes.
So in a an early season, less fit crit it might go 190, 150 then 5 min later 190 155, then 5 min later 190 160. Anyway the lower number increase as fatigue set in. Typically after the 45 min mark. As fitness improves that lower number will not increase so fast. A RR over longer time starts bringing up the valleys again.