Alright, this an edit to an earlier post to ask a follow-up question.
Here is the original post:
Late last night I decided that I was going to join a group ride early this morning going up South Mountain in Phoenix. I got all my gear together this morning, including my HRM (as usual) and headed out to the meeting point. I have only ridden the route once before and I remember it being pretty difficult, although not as bad as the word “mountain” would make it seem. Regardless, I knew that I would be redlining during certain portions of the climb. As we started out, I decided not to turn on the HRM and to ride by PE alone. What a freeing experience. I really feel that I was able to push harder than if I was constantly looking at my HRM. Don’t know how wise this is during a longer race like an IM, but for this 22 mile ride, it was perfect. I suppose I could dial in my PE to my actual effort and ditch the HRM full time. Or I could train with power. Where to find the extra $$$$$?
The new question is whether you are a slave to your gadgets and whether you could or would race and/or train without them?
Say no to power! It is worse than a HR monitor. You will always be its slave to it as long as you invite it along for a ride. Be free and just ride.
Chad
This year I switched from relying too much on a HR monitor to training solely by perceived exertion. And I’ve had my best year of all. Its really pretty simple – ride super easy on easy days, and ride like hell on wheels on hard days.
Glad to year you’ve ditched the HRM too!
By the way, I think racing by PE would work fine in an Ironman if you’ve trained that way and are in tune with your body. I race half irons and marathons on PE and it works great.
I hear you broseph, the only thing I’m checking is my watch to make sure I get back and have enough time to shower before everyone else starts showing up at work.
I’m pretty in tune with my effort when running and now leave the monitor at home most of the time, but I need numbers on my bike. I have no idea how hard I’m working, or more commonly how little I’m working.
Not any more. The only thing I bother with nowadays is my cadence.
Sheesh…that’s the one thing I don’t watch!
I like a HRM for long runs (to keep the first hour under control), and a powermeter for all bike rides, even group rides where I’m just going to go with the pack whatever it does. I never use a HRM on bike rides or short runs.
For the last 2 years I have not raced, trained, etc with power or hrm. I have generally kept my effort low and based all my workouts off of PE. I have enjoyed my workouts and was only a slave to time.
With that said, I think I will be making the switch to HRM and Power Meter this year. I feel I have so much to gain from the technology and in fact, take a look at Joel Friel’s latest article in Inside Tri Magazine. I also will plan to go through a real VO2 test, etc. as opposed to making up my own zones.
if your zones are right, and you’ve trained enough to know how they feel, it really shouldn’t make much of a difference. Being able to push harder because you don’t have a number in front of you may not be a good thing. Depends on what the goal of your training is.
Personally, I use the HRM on the bike when I’m doing HR target intervals. Mostly winter trainer work. Same deal on the rare occasion I do speed work on the track.
While I appreciate and make use of the HRM as a tool, I did run my best Half Marry without any form of electronic gizmo. I was just running at the pace that felt right (didn’t know what it was, what my time was or what my HR was). Now I did check my pace with someone with a garmin at mile 7 or 8, realized how quick I was really going and adjusted my pacing stradejy some, so I guess an electronic device did help, but still. It was a very freeing experience.
Trained with power for the last 1.5 years and had a problem with my rim coming out of true and now its been at the LBS for almost 6 weeks (that’s a whole different subject). Decided to take off the mounting kit off too, so no gadgets at all for quite awhile and its been nice. I ditched the HRM strap about a year ago and have not worn it since. Even when you train by power or whatever other gadget you have, it’s important to understand RPE as well so some workouts with no data are good too.
My results actually got better without the power meter, however road races and crits have a different strategy than tris (that’s all I do now).
There’s an assumption that just because you wear an HRM or ride with a PM that you’re a slave to it. I won’t elaborate at the moment but if you truly spend the time how and when to use them effectively you’ll discover that you weren’t actually using them effectively when you felt you were a slave to them. RPE is and always will/should be a significant driver in achieving optimal performance, imho.
What is the best choice for those who respond is not necessarily the best choice for you. For example, you’ll find some people say that they performed their best once they got rid of their PM. It might be because the time they spent with their PM allowed them to “recalibrate” what was previously broken.
Could I race without a PM? Absolutely and I’m thoroughly convinced the style and approach in how I execute the IM bike wouldn’t change one single bit. However, in my case, I choose to continue to use a PM because it helps quantify to others (and myself) a framework of which I feel produces the best results.
Although I train with a Garmin, I pretty much use it to record how far I go and for how long. I don’t race with it.
This year I raced without even a watch in my first Olympic and Half Iron distance races. In both races I paced myself really well, all based on PE. The only downside was that at the Half Iron I finished 2 seconds over my goal time of 5 hours. If I had a watch I’m sure I could have gotten those two seconds to break 5 hours.
I have more experience with running and most of the time I use HRM to review afterwards. I rarely use the HRM during the run portion of any tri.
I did buy a Power Meter and I do love the numbers. Since I’m still learning I like having the feedback after the ride and tracking fitness progress. I have lots of room to gain in cycling so I like having data.
However, during my last Oly I raced the bike portion by RPE and used the PM to tell me when I was coasting and not working hard enough. I didn’t watch HR and let RPE tell me when to back off. That’s where I found the PM to help the most.
Next experiment is a 1/2 Iron on Sept. 9th. Bike portion will be raced on RPE with PM to tell me when to pick it up. Kind of fun to experiment to see how the run is affected by pushing harder on the bike.
