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Kink in heart rate curve during VO2 Max intervals
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I am sure this is elementary stuff to those in the know, but I am curious about the shape of the curve defined by my heart rate response to VO2max efforts.

Looking through today's and prior VO2max workouts there seems to be a characteristic shape of this curve where there is a rapid increase in heart rate for the first 40-50 seconds of the interval, and then a less rapid increase through the rest of the interval. The transition point seems to be consistently around 150BPM. My heart rate tops out about about 170 during these intervals. Does the location of that kink mean anything?

I would like to research this a bit, but I am not sure what search keywords would get me to the right places.


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Re: Kink in heart rate curve during VO2 Max intervals [blwmhv] [ In reply to ]
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I think the mathematical term for this is "inflection point" but I don't know what the significance of it is. For what it's worth I took a quick look at some of my last VO2-repeat workouts and noticed the exact same thing. Also at around 150bpm and topping out around 170.
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Re: Kink in heart rate curve during VO2 Max intervals [blwmhv] [ In reply to ]
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I wouldn't worry about it too much, HR lags power…on 3 minute stuff by quite a bit.

More importantly, what the hell were you doing on the last one ;-)

Maurice
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Re: Kink in heart rate curve during VO2 Max intervals [blwmhv] [ In reply to ]
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When I was doing 3 and 4 min Z5 intervals last summer it would take me about 1 min to get my HR up in the low 150's and then top out near 160 bpm so I my transition point was about 7-8 bpm lower than the max was for that interval.

I have been told that it's the time in Z5 that counts so by soft starting (like your intervals 1,3,5 and kind of 2) you're really shortening the interval. I know that you're working hard but they need to be hard from start to finish.

jaretj
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Re: Kink in heart rate curve during VO2 Max intervals [mauricemaher] [ In reply to ]
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mauricemaher wrote:
I wouldn't worry about it too much, HR lags power…on 3 minute stuff by quite a bit.

More importantly, what the hell were you doing on the last one ;-)

Maurice

Not worried, just curious. Browsing through the trainerroad database of ride results of this type of interval, it appears that this type heart rate response is typical ( to the untrained eye ).

This was the first set of VO2 max intervals after resetting my FTP last week. That second set, especially that last one, just hurt and I lost focus.
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Re: Kink in heart rate curve during VO2 Max intervals [jaretj] [ In reply to ]
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jaretj wrote:
When I was doing 3 and 4 min Z5 intervals last summer it would take me about 1 min to get my HR up in the low 150's and then top out near 160 bpm so I my transition point was about 7-8 bpm lower than the max was for that interval.

I have been told that it's the time in Z5 that counts so by soft starting (like your intervals 1,3,5 and kind of 2) you're really shortening the interval. I know that you're working hard but they need to be hard from start to finish.

jaretj

Thanks for the feedback. You called it, I was a bit of a wuss this morning and did not spin up to target power prior to the start of the interval. It looks like Trainerroad has a bunch of these in store for me over the next few weeks, I will have opportunities to practice.
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