Originally Posted by
genejockey
A few years ago, I stopped at the bottom of a half-hour climb to strip off arm warmers, take a drink, etc. I glanced at my HRM - 244 bpm! I almost had a heart attack from that! What the.......!?!
But I checked my pulse, which was running around 100, so I figured it must be radio frequency interference. Next time I stopped there, same thing.
Then there was another time when I looked over my data from a ride and found that my HR had risen steadily during a descent, peaking at 170 bpm. That worried me, too, till I remembered I didn't feel anything out of the ordinary then, and later I read that HRMs sometimes do that as the wet clothing around them dries out.
So, as Reagan said, "Trust, but verify!"
I used to live in an area where almost every ride started with a steep (9% grade) descent on which I would approach 40 mph, and I would sometimes get HR readings in the range of 250 bpm. I eventually figured out that, with a less-than-snug jersey, the front of the jersey (including the zipper) would catch the wind and flap/oscillate very rapidly against the HRM -- you know, about 4x per second.
Originally Posted by
genejockey
One way to feel faster is to ride with people more out of shape than you are. This may require finding ever-older riding companions. At some point, you'll run out of them, though.
That doesn't always work. The first time I got schooled like this was with one of my old grad school profs. I was about 40yo, and he is probably 22 years older than me. And he absolutely thrashed me for a solid 50 miles. At one point, he got a puncture and had some difficulty fixing it...I just sat on the shoulder telling him to take his time.