Originally Posted by
rubiksoval
Nah, it's another poor attempt at trolling. He sent me an elementary-style pm telling me he started this thread. He really craves my attention, apparently.
But anyway, as someone who started out riding off the couch and managed to get to a cat 1 within 4 years by training exclusively with hr, I still see limited value in it. HR is fickle; it's responsive to a myriad of factors that may or may not be associated with performance output. What my hr is at any specific point in time is not relevant to me, not in training, not in recovering, not in performance situations. I've had a hr strap for the last two years just to ensure I'm not missing anything, but at no point in that time frame has it ever shown me anything additional, anything useful, or anything practical that I can use to further improve.
One day 160 bpm might be 90% of ftp, another day it may be 100%. In a race or competition it might be higher. When I'm tired, it'll be lower. Hot days versus cold days will affect it significantly, as does being indoors or outdoors for similar reasons. Whether or not I'm coming into the ride fasted or stuffed will also have a big impact.
On the contrary, and I've seen a prominent person in cycling training say something similar, at best it's showing me what I already know, and at worst it's outright deceptive. Using a Maffetone-esque training plan as a 20 something year old cat 1 drove me to full-on overtraining that took months to recover from. When residual fatigue comes into play, hr drops. Continuing to try to achieve specific hr zones deepens the hole. This is all readily apparent to me now, but as an aspiring (read: delusional) young 20 something with more ambition and drive than experience, it had disastrous consequences.
At the end of the day, what matters is whether or not I am capable of putting out the power at the right time. From 10+ years of training and racing as a 1, that hinges significantly on two physiological things that I can train: 1) how high my ftp is, and 2) how well I've prepared in a neuromuscular sense. When I have both those things right, I can get in the money in just about any amateur or pro crit I can enter. Depending on the race, the former may be more important, like in local races in which I'll likely need to be in a break contrasted to regional/national races in which the latter will be more important in that I'll need to respond to 100+ 700 watt surges before finishing up with 5-10 minutes of high aerobic effort and multiple sprints.
If I had to start over and do it all over again, I'd focus on getting my ftp as high as possible and my sprint. Every month, every year. The rest is just stuff to keep it interesting, snipe KOMs, and drop people on training rides.
Ah, I didn't see this post at first. I deal with some of the HR issues you discuss by monitoring my morning HRs and now being careful of the slope of my CTL. But as far as heat and cold go, I definitely can't put out the same power in the heat that I can in the cold and I'd be fool to try to on a long pass climb. My LTHR is the same no matter the temperature. It comes at a lower power in the heat but the result of going over is the same at any temperature, well maybe worse in the heat.
Maybe crits are different. I've never had an interest in anything under 60 miles. Being older, I suppose I've always worked the endurance side harder. Though until recently I could cremate anyone I rode with in a sprint, especially hill sprints, even after 200 miles. Then this young guy with big legs joined us. I think there's a talent thing with sprinting, some ATP thing.