This may be of no value to anyone other than me. Hopefully someone finds it motivates them to do more.
This year for several reasons I have been concentrating on cycling, to the point of actually bike racing. My first part of the year was spent training like many or most triathletes, going out and riding long distances at medium effort. I was training for an event at the end of June that included 3 days in a row and 300 miles of mountain climbing. I didn’t need speed, but did need endurance. I put in 5 weekends of back to back 100 milers on Saturday and Sunday. The event went well.
I then started riding with the roadies, and use a regular Wednesday night road “race” as a gauge of ability. I would get dropped early, and every time my heart rate approached the mid 160’s, I would start to fear getting popped. I couldn’t hit 175bpm for more than a few seconds before blowing up. I use my Garmin 405 to record my HR along the same exact course every Wednesday and could clearly see where I was getting dropped was also the same spot where my HR peaked, well below 180bpm.
One of the better riders locally - a pro mtb’r, started giving me specific workouts, including intervals, sprints, and hill repeats - you know the kind of stuff we do pretty rarely as triathletes (at least most of us if we’re being honest). They friggin’ hurt on the bike worse than on foot. I have been doing a lot of work at 115% of AT, plus a lot of flat out sprints.
5 short weeks later, and with no more than 2 specific training sessions per week, my max HR has moved up to 195. At the same peaks where I would top out previously, my HR is notably lower. I can hold my HR in the 170’s with no issue for a right long period of time. My effort level is reduced and my speed is up. The most interesting thing to me is that now when hitting those same really hard climbs during that wednesday night ride, I’m can no longer tell (without looking at the speedo) if they pace is slower or if I just am not working as hard. I’m not the fastest of the bunch but I ride much much more strongly with less effort, and I have about 15 beats of excess HR at the same spots that just a month or so ago topped me out. I was in really good shape before - efficiency wise, but I couldn’t put out watts without tiring quickly.
How this type of training will work for or against me in triathlon, you’ll have to wait till next year to find out. So will I. However, I have found the experiment VERY rewarding, and the HR monitor doesn’t lie.
I realize I’m only riding this year, and that tri training might preclude bike work at this effort level, but it might not…
Here’s one of the recent rides. I’ll have to post one from a month or so ago later when I get home.
