Question re: heart rate

[RoadRaven]

To do real training in my 70-80% zone, I could never take the bike out on the road. I'd be forever on the rollers.

Regina - I am interested by your words here.

Do you mean you cant get your heart rate up on the road?

See, if thats what you're saying, I find that interesting because I can't get my HR as high on the spin bike as I can when I am on the road. So I use the spin bike for specific rides - like cycling at 90 or 95 cadence for 45 minutes, or doing step up intervals.

The other training that involves pushing my LT, or hills, I do out on the road, as I cant seem to simulate it effectively indoors.

[lph]

I'm curious about my heart rate lately too. My brother died young and completely unexpectedly of a heart attack recently, so I've been taking a somewhat morbid interest in my heart function that I previously couldn't have cared less about.

So I borrowed a HR monitor and on my first ride (dirt road in the woods, plenty of hills) I was idly reckoning out my max HR to be ...lemmesee... 220-37=183. Next hill I hit there were some fit young men ahead just begging to be passed and before I knew it I had hit 185.
And on similar occasions (that is, fit young men, slow old women, or just anybody, actually, that NEEDS passing ) I've easily hit 180-185 and kept that rate for 10-20 seconds. So the formula obviously is inaccurate for me.

So from that I'm guessing my max is 190 or higher. I know you're supposed to test it individually, but it sounds like such a hassle, throwing yourself up a hill 3 times til you almost puke?

Another surprise was that with a resting HR of about 55 (evening, not morning) I still have a much higher HR (75-100) just moving around the house. Weird.

[7rider]

Regina - I am interested by your words here.

Do you mean you cant get your heart rate up on the road?

See, if thats what you're saying, I find that interesting because I can't get my HR as high on the spin bike as I can when I am on the road. So I use the spin bike for specific rides - like cycling at 90 or 95 cadence for 45 minutes, or doing step up intervals.

The other training that involves pushing my LT, or hills, I do out on the road, as I cant seem to simulate it effectively indoors.

Oops.. Sorry for the delay, Raven. I haven't checked this thread in a while.

No, I"m saying I can't keep my HR low on the road. It's always high.
If my maxHR is 185, 80% is 148 (185*0.8, unless I'm doing my math wrong). So the 70-80% range would be ~130-148. I routinely ride in the 165 range. For instance, my most recent ride (63 miles, lots of hills), my average HR was 152 and max 182 (avg. cadence was 63, but that includes all time spent coasting, too, so I guess that measures low, since I generally aim to pedal in the 90-95 range, too.). In contrast, I just did 20 minutes on the Concept II tonight (rowing machine, so probably not directly comparable) and my average was 124, max 145. I intend to ride rollers tomorrow night...I'll see how it goes with that.

[Veronica]

Oops.. Sorry for the delay, Raven. I haven't checked this thread in a while.

(avg. cadence was 63, but that includes all time spent coasting, too, so I guess that measures low, since I generally aim to pedal in the 90-95 range, too.).

My HRM doesn't factor in the time spent coasting, are you sure that yours does?

Can you get a graph that shows what your cadence is over time? That would be an easy way to see if it is averaging in the zeros. I wouldn't like it if mine averaged in the zeroes.

V.

[7rider]

My HRM doesn't factor in the time spent coasting, are you sure that yours does?

Can you get a graph that shows what your cadence is over time? That would be an easy way to see if it is averaging in the zeros. I wouldn't like it if mine averaged in the zeroes.

V.

Yeah, my Garmin allows you to plot cadence over time (or distance), overlaying HR, speed, grade, or a whole bunch of other variables.
Here's a graph of my cadence over time for the ride I mentioned. I imagine it picks up all those "zeros" (I'm not sure how it calculates a negative cadence, however! ). I guess this means I spend way too much time coasting, eh??

[RoadRaven]

So, if you can't keep your HR low... maybe its just you?
Maybe you just naturally have a higher HR?

I don't know these things.

You seem to have a good cadence going... I find when I mash, my HR goes up now... it was the other way around when I first started cycling.

Spinning would send my HR through the roof - but I have been working specifically on cadence over the past 6 weeks or so because I have finally understood (after two years!!!) the advantage spinning in a race can be...

So now my body is used to, spinning does not push my HR up? Perhaps this has something to do with it? Are you getting your body used to higher cadences?

[7rider]

I guess I just have a high HR on the bike. I can't really see a correlation b/t cadence and HR for me (it's more linked to speed and/or % grade). This past season is really the first season in many years that I've focussed on cadance. Perhaps with more miles, I'll see a link.

[Artisan]

I have a question on max heart rate. Today while running I pushed myself to see how high I could get my heart rate. I got it to 192, but I've never seen that on my road bike. The highest I've seen on the road bike was 185. I talked to a friend today, she told me that she read somewhere that you can't use your running heart rate max for guidelines on your training zones for bike riding, is this correct?