Oh yeah, I also meant to give you some tips on getting your HR to recover quicker.

Obviously, a stronger, more aerobically fit heart will be the most important aspect in a faster recovery HR, but you have some tools at your disposal to help it out. I actually call this "your tool box" and teach my Spin students how to have more control over their HR this way. I use it all the time in my outdoor riding.

Your parasympathetic nervous system is the system that slows down the HR. Some things you can do to activate it are the following (and all these things work together):
- breathe through your nose. After a real high intensity effort, it might take 20-30 seconds before you can do this, but try as soon as you can to incorporate nose breathing.
- extend your exhale. After a long inhale through the nose, exhale through the mouth (or nose, but when you're still breathing hard, it will be the mouth most likely), and make it last longer than the inhale, pushing the belly button back towards the spine. You actually decrease the intra-abdominal pressure, so that on your next inhale, you'll draw in more air (and O2), and expel more CO2 on each exhale. It's the CO2 build-up following an anaerobic effort that makes you breathe harder and your heart beat faster anyway (to get ride of it), so the more you can help it's removal, the quicker your HR will fall.
- belly breathe. As you inhale, let your belly expand, pushing your belly button away from you. Minimize how much your chest and shoulders raise when you inhale (thats the "fight or flight" mechanism we all seem to dive into when we breathe hard, but it doesn't serve us well). This allows the lower lobes of your lungs to expand and to fill up with O2 first, which increases the O2 saturation of the blood leaving your lungs, which will be sent to your recovering muscles. Ah yes, that's what they need!
- your mind. A focused mind can help the HR drop. A distracted mind will keep it elevated longer.

All these will help your HR to fall much quicker. Elite endurance athletes use these for HR control, as do singers (especially opera singers) to bring in more O2. If you look at Tour de France riders from the side, their bellies are often distended (and no one can say they have any body fat). That's because the photo was taken while they were inhaling. There's some famous pictures of Miguel Indurain like this.

I also use this to control HR during an effort, for example, while I'm climbing and my HR is a little higher than I want it. All else being equal (steepness, cadence and gearing), I can usually drop it 1-3 beats just through focused breathing, which can mean staying below my LT or not.

When you do this, watch your heart rate monitor - it's a great biofeedback tool. These even work if you're just sitting around. Put your HRM on at home, and sit quietly and focus on these 4 elements for several minutes with your eyes closed. You should see a drop in your HR (provided there's not other things affecting it, like caffeine...)

Hope this helps!