Thanks for your reply.
I look at the 125BPM at 170 watts as a good thing. First off, what is normal for me is becoming unknown, because, I feel (I hope) I’m getting fitter and thus my watts are going up and I am entering new territories of fitness. I’m estimating my zones based on HR not power because I feel my power has gone up so much since my FTP test when those power zones were formulated for me.
Since I was feeling good and generating a lot of watts for a pretty low heart rate I took that to mean my zone 2 power was now up to 170 watts vs the upper end of 147 back when I had the test. Again, my HR was very easily going into zone 3 and I had to control my enthusiasm to keep it in upper zone 2.
For as long as I’ve ridden with a HR monitor I’ve had an overall very low HR; it’s easily 30 beats lower than most of the guys on the A ride.
I have noticed the lag that HR has after increasing power. I guess what I’m confused about is why it rather suddenly became difficult (almost impossible) to maintain upper zone 2 HR and 170 watts when for the past hour and a half it was almost easy. I correct that it was really an hour st 170 watts, not an hour and a half since first half hour was warm up at low zone 2 and about 145 watts.
I ate three large wheat cereal bricks for breakfast and half pound of pasta for early lunch and headed out ad
Originally Posted by
Carbonfiberboy
170w @ 125 HR is normal for you? Your drop-off probably had nothing to do with eating. Say you're JRA and you come to a little steep hill. You come up and hit it, your HR rises nicely, by the top you're breathing hard and your HR is still coming up like it always does. Fine. But suppose you do that and you just aren't feeling it. You look down and see your HR is not coming up normally even though you're breathing hard. That's not good. In the latter example you're overcooked and need at least one rest or easy day, maybe two. HR vs. power is a very important thing to watch. They should operate in tandem, though HR will always lag power by some normal amount of time, and you should know what normal looks like. I would think you've been riding long enough to know that.
It's also possible that you've been riding on the edge of glycogen depletion. If your power was still low toward the end and HR was going up, that's not a good sign. Enough more of that and you'll feel really tired and 16 mph will be your max speed. Usually hormonal exhaustion (overcooked) means HR drops off and it gets difficult to raise anything much over Z1 no matter how hard you push on the pedals. HR is sort of low-normal but there's no power, that's usually low glycogen. You can test that by drinking a half bottle of sports drink or taking a gel or shot blok. If things get way better in the next 15', low glycogen. If not, overcooked. If I'm in good condition, fueled, and ready to ride at the start, I can still raise sprint power and LTHR after 200 miles.