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Resting Heart Rate Decrease Post Race Temporarily
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Hi, new poster here, sorry if this has been covered, but I've searched the internet at lengths and can't seem to find anything... My resting HR seems to be doing something very strange the days following a race, and I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing.

I'm thinking of signing up for my first ironman next year, and I've got a lot of endurance training for 12 hour obstacle races and mountain trail running races of 50 miles, but I want to make sure I'm doing things safely and not straining my heart as I up the ante here.

I've been doing a race once a week on zwift and I've noticed the following trend. Day of race, resting HR is 49. Day after race, resting HR is 49. Two days later, resting HR is around 44. At this point I usually begin training again, if I didn't do something light the day after the race already anyway. I've always noticed this trend, but it has become more obvious and apparent now that I'm racing more frequently on a bike. I couldn't race as frequently when running, but I've always noticed a similar trend in the last year. I also noticed, according to my garmin, if I put in a good effort on the day my RHR is lower, my VO2 max jumps up 1. I know you're all thinking, dude, what are you complaining about, but I want to see if anyone else has this similar trend now that a lot of people have constant HR tracking on their wrists.

When I search the internet, the only thing I can find is related to over training and your HR increasing, not decreasing. Today was the first time my RHR has dipped lower than 44, and it was 39. 5 Beats didn't seem to be anything to be concerned about, but 10 seems a little odd? Am I overdoing it? I don't feel like it. I spend most of my training time in Z2, less than 147 BPM and I'm 32 years old. The race I did on zwift the other day, my average HR was 158. I wasn't all-out racing, otherwise it'd have been around 164, which is why it's even more odd to me that my HR has dipped so low.

Anybody have similar experiences?
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Re: Resting Heart Rate Decrease Post Race Temporarily [davidnharris] [ In reply to ]
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Yes - I thought it was just me! Glad to see you post this.

I perform very poorly until my RHR comes back up to normal levels. I can do Z2 stuff in this state, but nothing more.

It took me a long time to figure this out, but lower RHR is now my #1 indicator of fatigue.
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Re: Resting Heart Rate Decrease Post Race Temporarily [86forty] [ In reply to ]
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Ah, thanks for the response. It's interesting to me that your RHR being low causes you to perform poorly, while mine usually results in my VO2 max metrics on the garmin increasing; not everytime, but occasionally. I do feel slightly more sluggish with my HR that low, but I just figured it was because maybe the oxygen's just not being pumped everywhere as fast. The only reason I can think my vo2 max would increase on those sluggish days is because I spend most of the day with very low activity, then really max out my effort since I have a bunch of pent up energy from sitting around.

Have you every tried to really push hard on a course you've done on your low RHR days to see if you could beat it? Part of me wonders if we're just approaching things differently psychologically. For instance, I thought all along that the low RHR would boost my performance, even though I was tired, while maybe you thought you were fatigued and just shouldn't push hard. I'm just curious... The true nature of my question was really to figure out if I could be causing harm to my heart when I push myself on the low RHR day, especially now that it's dropping 10BPM lower instead of just 5BPM. I'll be putting myself to a little test tonight since I took a rest day yesterday, and I'll be doing a short zwift race tonight. Maybe if my FTP from 20 minute power goes up it means I was properly rested. I know a cycling vo2 max would be a better correlation, but that remains pretty constant for me...
Last edited by: davidnharris: Jul 8, 19 13:11
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Re: Resting Heart Rate Decrease Post Race Temporarily [davidnharris] [ In reply to ]
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I've tried to push when my RHR is ~10bpm down, and I can never seem to do it. My legs and overall feeling are just dead. For a long time I thought I was getting sudden, beastly, gains when I saw the lower RHR, but it never worked out like that. I can't comment on the VO2 stuff, as it's not a metric I track or have access to (even if only an estimate).

Hopefully some others can chime-in on this one. I've always wondered but never asked.
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Re: Resting Heart Rate Decrease Post Race Temporarily [86forty] [ In reply to ]
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Yeah, it's only cool to brag about your RHR dropping to 39 BPM until you realize it's a detriment. Do you spend a lot of days with cold extremities? Part of me wonders if it has anything to do with circulation. I'm cold all of the time basically. I'm interested to hear from others as well.
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Re: Resting Heart Rate Decrease Post Race Temporarily [davidnharris] [ In reply to ]
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I've seen the same thing, then the opposite, and then no change so I don't bother with Resting HR anymore because it doesn't mean squat.
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