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W or HR on the turbo?
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So in September I used to do my easy work on the bike with both HR and power. At x BPM I produced y W and I was a happy Joe Athlete. My HR strap started acting out on me so I decided to give it a well deserved winter break. Kept my easy rides at y \pm 20 watts depending on the day and didn't think too much about it. Anyways, after some ridiculous improvement in the top end workouts over the winter I decided to get a gauge on my HR for the easy days. Turned out that my HR was waaaay too low at y \pm 20 watts. Thing is, now that I increase the watts, my legs aren't super happy about it. 90min at x BPM now is tough. Not that I can't do it, but I don't recall easy rides being that hard in the past. So after that biography, my questions finally arrive:

1) Should I follow HR or W when doing easy rides? I have not done an FTP test for quite some time.

2) Could my Power meter be off? Or my HR monitor? Im on a wahoo kickr with a Garmin 520 and a Garmin strap.

y has increased more than 35%, which I find weird to say the least.
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Re: W or HR on the turbo? [Schnellinger] [ In reply to ]
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There's a little book by Joel Friel called the power meter handbook which you might find helpful for these types of questions -- he talks quite a bit about heart rate vs power and how to use the relationship between the two to track progress and further your training. He says for foundation building rides ("easy rides"), he prefers to to keep the heart rate constant because then when power goes up for the same heart rate it's time to go to the next stage of training. That's for foundation building, but I guess it depends what you're trying to accomplish. Problem is you haven't done ftp test recently so you don't really know your zones. I suggest retest, and get the book! Also if I understand correctly I think you're saying that your top end power has improved out of proportion to your endurance power. If that's true you might like to do a test like Full Frontal on Sufferfest. It tests your ftp but also your ability to do shorter efforts like sprints and tells you where you're at relative to your ftp.
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Re: W or HR on the turbo? [Schnellinger] [ In reply to ]
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Easy rides should be that, easy so why have any measurement besides perceived effort. Don't get me wrong I always capture my data but I either have a capped HR or generally how the legs feel. If an easy ride is hard then it is a hard ride. I don't think W should feature when gauging an easy ride otherwise there is some kind of focus on the ride.
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