Originally Posted by Mojo GoGo
I've decided to try out the CTS program laid out in The Ultimate Ride and am looking for some help on figuring out my FM heart rate. I have a heart rate monitor but it doesn't have an Average HR feature...
My Max HR is 198 and I know I can ride in the 175ish range for 20+ minutes. Doing some really crude estimating the time required for a 3 mile TT and assuming a couple minutes to spike my HR up to the 180 range I estimated an average of 170 BPM (170 x 0.86 = 146 BPM). I also figured out a WAG high estimate as well of 176 and that works out to 151 BPM.
I've seen other threads about how Foundation Miles seem like such easy peddling (which is the case for me given my estimate above ). I ended up riding in the 148 - 152 range. Does this sound about right or should I scale back to 146 - 150?
Don't get too caught up in the numbers. I coach for CTS and always make sure that my athletes don't focus too much on that HR. Essentially, the FM is one of those workouts where you're just putting in the miles early in the season. I like to look at it like this - if you're able to have a fun ride and hold a conversation (theoretically) the entire way, then that's a good foundation ride. The range you mentioned above (148-152) is fine. But you may see that some days you don't feel like riding at exactly between 148-152, so you can drop it back or pick it up a little bit. That's not a problem at all. Just use those workouts to enjoy the time outside...you'll have enough time later in the year to focus on HR ranges, etc.
