BigSean

Today I was unable to ride at anywhere near my normal ability. My HR was way to high (180-190) even when I backed off and took it easy. I did my first century last saturday, took sunday off and lifted weights mon thru friday. I did legs monday. After 12 miles I decided to call it a day. Any ideas? Did I over exert my body this week, or does this sound like Im getting sick?

JPradun

Sounds like you aren't mentally ready for it. Take off the heart rate monitor and try your next workout.

terrymorse 

Sounds to me like you are detrained from not getting any aerobic exercise during the week.

If I take off even a few days in a row, my heart rate while exercising is very high. After returning to riding for a couple days in a row, my exercising heart rate returns to normal.

Try getting some sort of cardio exercise during the week.

531Aussie

that's because your legs are fresh, not because you've lost fitness. Your HR is a consequence of what your legs are capable of on the day. I'm sure you've heard of athletes tapering off to almost nothing before an event? They taper for more than a few days, and they're not losing fitness

If your legs are fresh and strong, they're capable of pushing the 'big watts', and consequently your HR will be slightly higher.

Conversely, if your legs are REALLY dead and sore, it's sometimes impossible to get your HR up to your normal TT zones, because your legs can't generate the output.

Do a 'Google' for Joe Friels' (or anyone else, really) stuff on perceived exertion and HR

BigSean

Ready for what?

ken cummings

As I woke yesterday morning I noticed my heart rate was 98 BPM. Oh. Right. Side effect of the heavy doses of Niacin my sports medicine Doctor has me taking to get my Triglycerides under control. Is there any other factor in your life that could be affecting your heart rate?

terrymorse 

Your "fresh legs hypothesis", where rested muscles can push harder and thus increase the aerobic load and the heart rate, may explain some high heart rates after rest. But my elevated heart rate after rest is not a consequence of fresh legs. I'll ride the same uphill course at the same speed (same power), and my heart rate will be higher after multiple rest days. I've measured a 5% HR increase after 48 hours, and up to a 12% increase after 72 hours. Mine is clearly a reduction in aerobic capacity, almost certainly caused by a reduction in blood plasma volume.

Tapering is not the same as resting. Tapering is a reduction in training volume: enough of a reduction to allow complete recovery by race day, but not so much of a reduction to cause detraining. If an athlete's tapering plan includes a complete rest day close to his event, he's throwing away fitness.

531Aussie

^^ hmmmm....interesting

If you're well trained, I just don't think you'd be losing fitness in 3 days.

VosBike

Where the hell do you get this from?

Richard Cranium

Nobody knows what you're doing. Not even you.

You'll have to establish some sort "base line" effort under fully rested conditions, repeatable efforts are needed to confirm what a normal HR is for an effort.

terrymorse 

It's pretty easy to see the consequences of rest just prior to an event. All you need to do is study how rapidly plasma volume is lost in a highly trained athlete during rest. There are several studies that demonstrate this. In one study, runners lost a kilogram of plasma after just 48 hours of rest. Plasma volume relates directly to aerobic capacity, and their performance numbers dropped accordingly. Plasma volume goes away quickly, and it comes back quickly (thankfully). It's controlled by Anti-Diuretic Hormome (ADH), which is produced during exercise.

Also note that in the Tour de France, none of the cyclists actually rests on "rest days". A rider is sure to go out and ride to maintain his plasma volume. He may not know why he does it, but he probably knows that he'll suffer on the next race day if he doesn't do it.

!!Comatoa$ted

Those studies that you speak of sound interesting, are you able to cite them off hand? I would like to read some of them.

I ask because of my interest, and not because I dispute what you are saying. If you can't cite them are you able to point me in the right direction?

Thank you

VosBike

First I want to apologize for the tone of my last post, it came out very assinine and confrontational. However...

Nice throwback to a school of thought held by a small minority in the excercise physiology community for about two years.

a. Plasma volume varies hugely in a given individual under slight changes in conditions.

b. Plasma volume can be regained in a matter of minutes from intracellular water stores after a stimulus (like excercise) is applied.

c. Plasma volume at time of excercise has NOT been shown to correlate to aerobic performance. Maximum plasme volume, on the other hand, has been shown to correlate to aerobic capacity. Thus, it doesn't seem to matter what your plasma volume is at a given time, it appears that maximum plasma volume is an indicator of aerobic fitness. There is a correlation but no causual relationship.

terrymorse 

I fond the studies a few years ago on PUBMED, when I was grappling with my own rest related issues. I tried to find the studies with a quick search, but I still couldn't find them after several search attempts. Sorry. Here is a closely related study, which measured a 1 kg drop in body weight after 2 days of rest. This study did not measure a drop in VO2peak. Unfortunately, they didn't measure time to exhaustion.

I don't know enough about the details of what you write above to comment intelligently, other than to say there are recent studies that show acute plasma volume expansion increases VO2peak and time to exhaustion. If artificially increasing plasma volume increases performance, that seems to be a causal relationship to me.

And there's this study:

Effects of detraining on cardiovascular responses to exercise: role of blood volume.

which concluded that detraining reduced blood volume, stroke volume, and VO2max, and that artificially increasing blood volume restored those performance measures.

But based on my own experiments, I can say with confidence that a short term reduction in my plasma volume corresponds to a reduction in my performance. And I can say with confidence that my plasma volume drops off rapidly with rest. After rest, and at the same power, my heart rate and respiration are higher, my perceived exertion is higher, and my time to exhaustion is shorter.

What metabolic changes other than plasma volume can explain such a drop in performance on such a short time scale? I submit there is none. I discussed this at length with Andy Coggan, who concurred. He was surprised at the speed at which I lose fitness during rest, but he agreed that plasma volume was the only sensible explanation. (Andy was involved with one of the early studies of the effects of plasma volume expansion on cardiac output, in 1989.)

531Aussie

(warning: old thread )

Hey Tezza...

ok, I've been mulling over this since Jan. Yes, I've gotta get a life.

How about this one, regarding the "fresh legs" vs blood volume suggestion:

After 2 or 3 days of easy riding and lowish miles (following a hard week), my legs feel fantastic, and these are the days I can smash all my friends () and easily sustain high HRs [high 180s to low 190s for well over 30mins (my max is about 202/203)]. I assume I've maintained my blood volume and RBC count, yet I can blow my HR off the boards if I choose, and apparently with good power

I don't have a power meter, but my friends even sometimes comment with stuff like, "you were obviously having one of your 'good' days today." And on my weaker days, when my legs are a bit dead, and I struggle to get my HR over 185, they notice that I'm not as strong.

A couple of weeks ago, bad weather meant I missed a Sunday ride, only did and an easy 30 miles on Monday, then couldn't ride at all on Tuesday & Wednesday. I had a group ride on the Thursday, and my legs sure felt like crap!!

????

ericgu

I also think you detrained. You put your body through a lot, and then didn't do any aerobic work for a week.

It would have been better to get on your bike for a couple of light rides during the week...