I’m intrigued by this. To take some extreme examples: if I were to do nothing but eat pies for six weeks, or decide to pedal with just one leg, or have a leg amputated, max performance level would clearly drop (presumably by somewhere not a million miles away from 50% in the later two cases). However, would one really expect a large change in HR at the maximal performance level?
Your example is really too contrived to have much relevance to this discussion, but to answer it anyway:
I would expect a larger change in heart rate at a given absolute intensity than at a given relative intensity, but even the latter would likely change.
I’m not sure if that directly addressed my question, (admittedly a contrived one)… which is are there conditions under which max power will change by much more than the HR associated with it?
Actually, maybe the research you’ve been doing on the effect of intervals could be interesting here… from memory the interval programs are changing signficantly the power/HR relationship for a given maximal distance/duration test (apologies in advance if I’m not remembering the research properly here)… I’d be interested to hear what variation there has been in the HR during those tests, versus the variation in the power as the program has progressed.
are there conditions under which max power will change by much more than the HR associated with it?
Acutely? Sure, with altitude being the most obvious example. But I assumed that we were talking about the typical things one must deal on race day.
Actually, maybe the research you’ve been doing on the effect of intervals could be interesting here… from memory the interval programs are changing signficantly the power/HR relationship for a given maximal distance/duration test (apologies in advance if I’m not remembering the research properly here)… I’d be interested to hear what variation there has been in the HR during those tests, versus the variation in the power as the program has progressed.
Heart rate is staying essentially constant while power is rising. However, I wouldn’t consider such training-induced changes in heart rate relevant to the issue of whether you’re safer pacing off of heart rate vs. power (since presumably fitness is a given, i.e., you know roughly what you are capable of before you even toe the line).
Haha, awesome AND true. Pace is for sure the best available way to gauge output as a %age of your current max for swimming and running. Of course now some bright STer is going to try bringing a GPS in the pool
Also, I’m not sure that it even makes sense to think of swimming in terms of power. This might be less true for a great swimmer like you, but for us non-superhero swimmers it’s more a question of learning how to not fight the water than to simply try to pull harder. Delicate balance there.
I don’t know of a tool for measuring power on the swim or run
Ever try pace?
Nope - for a constant power output, your pace on the swim is going to be affected by wind, waves, drafting, how good a course you pick, what wetsuit you’re wearing and how good your technique holds up during the race. And that’s ignoring the fact that it’s not practical to accurately measure pace in an open-water swim race anyway.
Same thing on the run - measuring pace is easier I’ll grant you, but pace will be affected by wind and/or hills on most courses. Although to be honest I suspect that for most athletes the run is the biggest lottery of the 3 events insofar as the pace/power/intensity you can maintain varies considerably depending how well your pacing and nutrition went for the first 2 legs.
I haven’t had much problems using HR for the bike, but after a long ride my heart rate is almost always depressed. I’m considering not even taking my Garmin on the run at CdA (plus it’s heavy and really annoying). I feel like I will go out too hard on the run if I have my HRM. The HR depression that I get can change my pace zones by 1.5 minutes per mile.
That’s helpful… so we have two factors which mainly impact performance rather than HR (fitness and altitude)… isn’t dehydration the same?
Wouldn’t you presumably know your level of fitness and the altitude of the race before the gun ever went off?
Dehydration (hypohydration may actually be what you mean) would likely impact heart rate more than power.
Is there any research on the impact of fatigue/taper??
A proper taper generally improves performance by ~2%. Heart rate, OTOH, might be higher or lower than expected, depending on how/how much one tapers and what one bases their expectation upon.
Fatigue tends to suppress heart rate even more than it impacts performance.
That’s helpful… so we have two factors which mainly impact performance rather than HR (fitness and altitude)… isn’t dehydration the same?
Wouldn’t you presumably know your level of fitness and the altitude of the race before the gun ever went off?
In terms of translating them into an predicted performance level… maybe not, particularly altitude I guess.
2. Dehydration (hypohydration may actually be what you mean) would likely impact heart rate more than power. Interesting… I came across this yesterday… am I misreading it if I interpret it to show performance deterioration with dehydration with no measurable change in HR? Or is it a bit of a rogue study? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...mp;list_uids=8002117
Is there any research on the impact of fatigue/taper??
A proper taper generally improves performance by ~2%. Heart rate, OTOH, might be higher or lower than expected, depending on how/how much one tapers and what one bases their expectation upon.
Fatigue tends to suppress heart rate even more than it impacts performance.
Interesting… so how do you recommend amending target power in a tapered vs non-tapered situation
Haha, awesome AND true. Pace is for sure the best available way to gauge output as a %age of your current max for swimming and running. Of course now some bright STer is going to try bringing a GPS in the pool
**I can see it now… ZAP!!! **
Also, I’m not sure that it even makes sense to think of swimming in terms of power. This might be less true for a great swimmer like you, but for us non-superhero swimmers it’s more a question of learning how to not fight the water than to simply try to pull harder. Delicate balance there.
**No super hero here… just too many water logged YEARS worth of time in the pool as a youngin’! I dont think of it in terms of power but rather have extrapolated the Coggan and Daniels methods to my time in the pool and have done my best to make a quantifiable stress figure from the efforts. But above all things… technique is the most difficult and most limiting factor when it comes to swimming. But then again… is it really technique or is it the inability to sustain a high turnover (i.e. higher gear)? I ask this becuase it’s this higher gear that I do not have on the run that seems to be my limiting factor. **
How are you determining your HR is depressed after a long ride? Are you sure it’s not also depressed during your long ride? I’ve not encountered anyone who experiences a depressed HR in one discipline yet not another. As AC indicated, most people will experience different power:HR and/or pace:HR after your taper period. I find for most people it actually rises a bit once you’re tapered as it’s quite common to see your HR at its lowest levels during peak volume periods which often occurs during the month of May for people training for IMCDA.
A Garmin can certainly be helpful in those early miles of the run but I’ve used a HRM quite successfully too. The problem is that people often don’t have a good understanding of where their HR should be during the first few miles of the run. Or they feel like they’re running so slow anyway so they just ignore the data that’s slapping them right in the face…
When I run open, my zone 2 pace is around 8:45-9:00 per mile. If I do a brick after a long ride, in order to hit zone 2 I have to get to sub 8 minute pace. I’m sure it’s depressed at the end of the ride as well, but I just don’t notice it. I don’t display speed on my garmin during rides, so I wouldn’t notice as much.
I think its hard to use HR early in the run. I start running ridiculously slow - check my split at mile 1 (some people will even mark out the quarters or half mile to check earlier). I keep running slow and check my splits at mile 2-3. If my pace is faster than goal pace (and we all think we will run faster than we do) at any point - I slow down. By the time you’ve done a few miles, your HR will settle and you’ll have a better feeling for pace (which seems to be quite difficult in longer races)…or at least thats what works for me.
I think the reason why it takes people a few miles to get their HR to settle is because that’s when they actually start slowing down to a pace they can possibly sustain. Hey, I just look at the data. Take a peak at IMCDA and IMC run splits results. They have splits for the ~1 mile marker (.9 miles at IMCDA) and you can clearly see that 95%+ of the people in the top 500 are running well above the pace they sustained for the entire IM run.
Just a quick sample… Of the top 150 at IMC in '05 only 13 people ran that first mile slower than I did and I still ran the first mile faster than my average pace for the whole IM run. I was 77th OA. More interesting, it was my worst IM run to date.
I think that should give you a sense of how rediculously fast people run those early miles and yet I continue to see people write in their RRs how high their HR was during the initial part of the run.
If you’re running rediculously slow then you’re apparently the only one…
The people with high heart rates at the beginning of the run are ignoring the data…but Jodi (and I see this sometimes myself) is noting that her HR is low at the start of the run and if she tries to get it up into range - then she runs too fast early…
I do agree 100% with you - even worse with the start of the bike…people’s pacing isn’t always the best.
Forgive me if I’m sounding anal but we should be clear here because I thought AC said something that’s very important:
Heart rate, OTOH, might be higher or lower than expected, depending on how/how much one tapers and what one bases their expectation upon.
Jodi has never done an IM so she’s basing her expectation on training. Because she’s never done an IM she’s obviously never tapered for an IM. She might be disappointed at what she sees when racing if she bases her expectation on training (especially in her first IM). This is a very important point as I believe the #1 number reason why people say HR is useless in an IM is because
They haven’t bothered to really understand their own personal HR characteristics well enough
They’re basing their expectations off bogus data (see #1) or just possibly due to a lack of experience
It’s funny because when I talk to people (eg KP) I know go through the effort of really understanding their HR characteristics throughout the training and racing season, coincidentally enough their experience almost always matches mine identically. That doesn’t mean their specific HR ranges/zones/levels match mine – it’s just means that the rise and fall (relative to something like our HRmax or IM Power) is the same as we begin our training season, hit peak volume periods and then race.
I don’t believe the decision is power or HR. For IM, it’s both. HR becomes much much less important for short-course but then so does power…
“A proper taper generally improves performance by ~2%. Heart rate, OTOH, might be higher or lower than expected, depending on how/how much one tapers and what one bases their expectation upon.”
That’s feels a pretty small taper impact… if that’s all its worth, I’d almost be tempted not to bother, based on a) the risk of fucking it up, b) to keep my HR instrumentation calibrated…
You don’t necessarily taper to improve performance. You also taper to better ensure reasonable performance. IOW, simply showing up somewhere between 90 - 100% prepared is going to ensure reasonable performance. Going into an IM slightly fatigued is like going into an IM being 101% prepared. However, I believe there’s a pretty steep cliff after 100%. People who even shoot for 100% are taking quite a significant risk.
If you’ve done consistent and very solid training (very subjective terms) up to 2 weeks prior to your IM then about the only things you can do to screw things up prior to race day is crash or go too hard.
I dont think of it in terms of power but rather have extrapolated the Coggan and Daniels methods to my time in the pool and have done my best to make a quantifiable stress figure from the efforts. But above all things… technique is the most difficult and most limiting factor when it comes to swimming. But then again… is it really technique or is it the inability to sustain a high turnover (i.e. higher gear)? I ask this becuase it’s this higher gear that I do not have on the run that seems to be my limiting factor. **