For those of you who use heart rates for pacing races, what pace (as a percentage of LT heart rate) do you use for the bike portion of Olympic distance and Half-Ironman triathlons?
A complicated question…how do you define LT heart rate? Last 20 min of a 30 min TT vs. onset of lactate accum (OBLA) vs. some level of lactate - 4 mmol (not sure on those units)…lab test vs. road test…
But my numbers roughly:
Max HR about 194 (on the run) - never seen much above 180 on the bike but never tested for that.
Run heart rates for a 10K - low 180’s after 1st 2 miles.
Hard 30 min bike rested - low 170’s after 1st few miles.
I just did a 1k-40k-5k. Averaged 162 on the bike. Thats seems to be in the ballpark for most of my oly’s - low 160’s to 165. I’ll hit high 160’s toward the end of the 40K.
Half IM - average about 152-3 usually.
I usually run at a heart rate about 10 above my bike HR’s in most races.
So to sum it up - my estimate is this:
Last 20 min of hard 30 min TT as a work-out: HR about 172. Oly about 10 beats lower = 162. Half IM about 10 beats lower than that = 152. I’d race a sprint or oly mainly by feel and use the heart rate monitor to avoid doing something stupid on the bike in a half IM.
Dave