I have question for ya’ll about training and racing pacing using HR. I’ve read Gordo’s and Freil’s work on establishing training zones, so I feel comfortable that I understand what HR’s correspond to each training zone, and what pace/speed that correlates to at the beginning of a workout. As the workout progresses, however, the HR will invariably drift upwards over time. Do I continue at the same pace and allow the HR to drift, or do I reduce pace to maintain HR within the prescribed zone? Often times, HR will drift upwards, but there is no increase in perceived exertion, so if I reduce pace to maintain HR I feel like I’m running or riding at a ridiculously slow pace by the end of a long run or ride. It would seem to me that the correct method is to establish the pace of the workout at the beginning of the workout using HR and perceived exertion as a guide, and then lock in that pace unless perceived exertion changes, even if HR drifts upwards. Thoughts?
I’ve noticed and wondered the same thing. When toward the end of a long ride/run/brick, I can’t stay in my zone for the life of me. What I’ve done the last few workouts is just turn off the audible alarm at about the 75% point of the workout and just run/bike on PE. I’ve noticed that when I do that, I tend to keep going at roughly my high limit for HR +/- a couple beats. I’m not sure if its the right thing or not but it gets me home and I generally fell just fine the next day.
we had a spirted debate about this one a few weeks ago:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=71250;search_string=cardiac%20drift;#71250
i think the group is split on this issue.
Thanks for the link. I’ve been absent the forum for a few weeks, as our daughter was just born. I go away for a few weeks and miss all the good stuff.
Anyway, not to rekindle the debate, but Julian’s logic is exactly what I had in mind. Absent a power meter, I would set the pace of the workout by HR and PE at the initial stages, and then maintain that pace as long as PE stays consistent, regardless of what HR does (within reason).
I think that is the conclusions the “smart money” came to and it does in fact make sense. The nagging problem that remains with me is that LT is LT and it does not suffer from cardiac drift. Training above your LT during the base phase of a training cycle has implications that the training by power concept does not really address. I may be one man on an island on this one but I like my own company.
“The nagging problem that remains with me is that LT is LT and it does not suffer from cardiac drift.”
The problem I see with this argument is that it assumes that HR is the training objective, rather than just a symptom. I am inclined to believe that LTHR is not the same as LT power; the former will drift while the latter will not. What brings on fatigue is how much power you’ve exerted over what period of time- not how many times your heart contracted. To use the sauna analogy from the other thread, I could artificially increase my HR using any number of methods (heat, stimulants, sickness, dehydration, lack of sleep, etc) without exercising at all. None of these things will bring about an accumulation of lactic acid that would prevent me from further exercise. To put it another way, if it was all about HR, why couldn’t I just go to the local Wal-mart and buy huge box of Nicotene patches and some No-Doze, and jack up my HR to 150-160 and sit on my couch for 6-7 hours instead of doing that tedious long ride? I’m not sold on my logic here, but I see more flaws in basing the training solely on HR than on PE and pace (with HR as the guide at the initial stages of the workout).
I’m not advocating strict HR training where you can’t play outside of the sandbox but I maintain my belief that the world is not training by power, though maybe should and if it were more cost effective it would. Given these facts HR is a “reasonable guide” as was suggested in some of the other posts.
Your concept of jacking yourself up on stimulants is not necessary to make the point that you have to adjust your thinking with respect to HR training for external stimuli. The concept of the a headwind while cycling is sufficient enough. I understand the science here, in fact that is what is causing me problems – the science is inexact so why make yourself a slave to any device let alone an expensive one.
So the question is how does power transfer to the swim and the run? Yes, pace, I got that far but no one can take me much further. The point that I was trying to make before and am again trying to make know is that sensible HR training that does not exist in a static framework can be a sufficient guide to achieve solid training and racing gains. Further, I have not seen many top AG triathletes in this area running around with power taps. They seem to be confined to the trainer world, which is but a small part of a training season. HR while possibly over simplistic is in fact more portable, cheaper and potentially every bit as good as long as you use your head. That’s all.
I’m inclined to believe that while the numbers (power, HR, whatever) can be useful, they are only a very small part of what constitutes an effective training regimen, and in fact only attempt to quantify in a measurable way what people already know, ie perceived exertion. Chris Boardman himself said that he could have probably achieved much more as a cyclist if he had not been such a slave to the HRM and power meter.
My reasoning is that the human body is a dynamic system, not a static one, so your LT heart rate (or power output, or whatever you choose to measure) will change on a daily basis, for a variety of reasons. Better approach is to learn what the intensity levels feel like (ie RPE) and train according to that, which will take into account all of those external factors more effectively. But it requires experience to know what the RPE levels are.
I totally concur with what you are saying. Sometimes I wish I had never read the TB. I think there are too many slaves.
Maybe Chris and I could be friends.
Re: the stimulant analogy… well I have a tendency to go to the extreme when trying to make a point 
I totally agree with what you and others are saying. Thanks for the input.
Being in Florida I can tell you that heat is not an artificial stimulant. When it is hot here, which is most of the time, over the course of running 5 to 7 miles, my heart rate will steadily increase to my LTHR at a pace that would be very comfortable in cool weather. Once my HR gets up that high, I am starting to feel it and just pack it in.
It seems very clear to me that the only thing I am stressing under those conditions is my body’s ability to handle heat. If my body got better at handling heat as a result, I would be happy to continue. Unfortunately, this process just beats the tar out of me with no offsetting training effect. I get all the negatives of a killer workout, with none of the benefits.
Don’t be a slave to the HR monitor, but don’t ignore it either. There is useful information there, which when combined with RPE and such, will help you train.
jkatsoudas wrote: I am inclined to believe that LTHR is not the same as LT power; the former will drift while the latter will not. What brings on fatigue is how much power you’ve exerted over what period of time- not how many times your heart contracted.
BINGO! This is because your LT threshold is not determined by your cardiac output…at least not in a trained athlete. While I’m at it, let me say that LT is not even a real good indicator of the rate of glycogen useage.
Do this simple test. Squat down, then jump up as hard as you can…as soon as you land, jump up again. Take your pulse. You’ll be WAY under your calculated maximal aerobic HR…however you choose to measure it. Does this mean you are still burning fat for energy to do the test? No. You burnt glycogen. Did your lactate rise? You bet it did…at the local muscle level. Did your blood lactate rise? Maybe a tiny bit…but, your lactate from your jumping muscles is being diluted with the non-lactated blood from your non-jumping muscles.
In a steady-state athletic event, that is endurance in nature, many things can raise your HR other than reaching a supposed Lactate Threshold. Calculating the rate of energy consumption and balancing it with the rate of energy availability is a very tough thing to get fixed, and LT is one of the tools devised to try and fix it. It doesn’t always do such a good job.
One of the interesting things that happens as a muscle becomes more acidic is oxygen moves off the Hb molecule more easily…so oxygen is more available. Capillary beds dilate…making blood more available, etc. In fact, slightly pre-acidifying a muscle can make it work more efficiently. It’s a technique used in “beating” open heart surgery…it’s also one we use when preparing for a fast run or time trial. You warm up, then give a few good bursts of just-a-bit-harder than race-pace efforts, and you perform better.
All this leads me back to the question…ignore slight cardiac drift as your exercise lengthens. It doesn’t necessarily mean you are becoming Lactate overloaded…it just depends upon too many other things…on the other hand, if your performance is dropping off quickly…that means something significant is occuring…no matter if you HR is rising, staying the same, or falling.
Ignore it. Why slow do if for the last 45 min you’ve been running comfy? If your running/riding on the jagged edge thats another story. The only thing I see slowing down to keep my HR in some arbitrary range doing is teaching me to back off my given pace near the end of a run. Why do I want to teach myself to go slower just because of normal physiological functions my HR has gone up 8bpm. Use the HRM as a guide and put the brain back into training.
OK- so I ran this rather unscientific test at lunch yesterday on the treadmill in the gym. Rather than varying pace to keep HR within the prescribed zone (Freil zone 2 in this case) I warmed up for 10 minutes, then set the pace at Aet (bottom of Freil zone 2) based on HR and then kept the pace there for the entire run. I then looked at 10 min HR averages from my Polar download after the run. Here’s what I got:
0-10 min (warmup): avg HR 141
10-20 min: avg HR 155
20-30 min: avg HR 160
30-40 min: avg HR 163
40-50 min: avg HR 167
50-60 min: avg HR 170
60-70 min: avg HR 172
I’ve previously calculated my AeT at 154-155, and my Freil zone 2 is 152-165. Perceived exertion throughout this test changed very little. I wasn’t lucky enough to get the treadmill in front of the big fan, so I was definitely getting hotter as the run progressed, even though I was drinking plenty of water. By the 30 minute mark I was above Gordo’s “easy” pace (AeT +5) , and by the 40 minute mark I was clearly outside of zone 2. Had I controlled pace using HR only (as I have done in the past) I would have slowed my pace by more than 0:30/mile over the course of this run to keep the HR in line. At the end of this run I felt no more fatigued than if I had slowed the pace to keep HR in zone 2, and I feel no lasting soreness or fatigue today from that run. Based on this little experiment I’m inclined to believe what I had previously stated (or at least experiment with it further), i.e., the correct way to set pace is to set set it using HR and RPE at the beginning, and then only change it if RPE changes, not HR. Thoughts?
<<“But to say that the race is the metaphor for the life is to miss the point. The race is everything. It obliterates whatever isn’t racing. Life is the metaphor for the race.” – Donald Antrim >>
Sorry to get off topic, but I love this quote!
Brett
Bingo. (I’m trying to be more concise.)
Your scenario is exactly what I was referring to in my description above while running in the heat. I am guessing if you ran on the treadmill with the big fan, your HR would have been much lower.
I don’t buy that you didn’t get more beat up with this workout than if you hadn’t had the heat issues. You kept your HR well below LT, so the workout was not so tough that it would affect you in a big way the following day. Had you kept going for another twenty minutes or so, or done this a few days in a row, I believe you would have a different opinion. Try training in the Florida heat for a few weeks and you will be very aware that it beats up on you over time.
I don’t think you should completely ignore drift when it is caused by conditions like heat, especially during training. It winds up being all pain, caused by fighting the heat, and no gain, since your aerobic system is not what is being stressed.
Art- I think we’re sort of saying the same thing. I agree that you can’t ignore heat. I have in-laws that we visit quite regularly in the Central Valley (Fresno) so in training for Vineman last year I intentionally did long runs and rides starting at noon to acclimate to the expected heat of race day. As you state, that sort of heat (100-110 deg) will definitely have an impact. However, I always felt it in RPE during the workout and adjusted accordingly. What I’m saying is- if you don’t feel a change in RPE don’t change your pace simply because your HR is drifting. If your RPE changes significantly for whatever reason (heat, dehydration, poor nutrition, etc) absolutely change what you’re doing.