Originally Posted by
metalheart44
Concerns I have about my heart are noted in a post above, the short version is decreased performance this past year, some chest pains, tiredness, and a mismatch between perceived effort and heart rate.
I have been riding 3-4 times a week the past month, some weather issues have kept me off the bike a few times, but I’ve managed four different on-the- bike “stress tests” on a selected hill, about a quarter mile average 10% grade. Some of those efforts are concerning, some not: when my heart rate is lower than my perceive effort and I am breathing very hard I get concerned. When my heart rate matches perceived effort, then I am not concerned.
On the last effort yesterday, my heart rate, breathing, and perceived effort were consistent and I reached close to
predicted max heart rate for my age. Recovery was also ok, with heart rate dropping 30% from calculated max within a couple minutes. I did several more climbs on the ride and did just fine. The overall ride was 31 miles with 2500 feet of climbing, nothing unusual for me.
I did have chest pain during the ride but there was no connection between the onset or duration of the pain and cycling effort. That is a confounding experience so I am working with my doc to rule out other potential sources of that persistent chest pain if it is not cardiac related.
So, tomorrow I have the nuclear stress test
(SPECT) the doc prescribed. This will be my 6th stress test since my first heart attack and the second nuclear stress test. The others were either standard stress treadmill or stress echocardiogram. Each of these offers different types of information, but short of an angiogram, the nuclear stress test is probably the best look at my heart that will happen.
For me, cycling is the best indicator of my overall health and particularly my heart health. When there are changes in in cycling performance and experience, I don’t worry about my heart, but I do pay attention and try to sort out what are the issues
Hope you do fine on your test.
Possible causes for your issues:
1) Chest pain can often be muscular discomfort, cramping, associated with breathing hard. My cardiologist told my that my chest pain, right over my heart, is nothing to worry about. He said that if something was wrong, I'd certainly know about it by now. Just an encouraging note.
2) When my HR lags my RPE, I know I'm tired. That's definitive. If you're posting here and climbing 7500' or so every week, yeah, you could be just tired. Do you upload your rides and watch your hrTSS, CTL, TSB, morning resting and standing HRs and orthostatic HR, any of that? Use an HRV app on your phone? You might want to do all of that. I betcha there'd be clear signals coming from your numbers which would set your mind at ease.
As we age, it's pretty hard to train effectively without keeping track of how our training is affecting our physiology. We can't just do anything we want, any time we want anymore.