ChrisAlbertson

You already did the first step, use a heart rate monitor. I'm watching mine too as I am in my 60s and just getting back into bike riding. I'm not in great shape, I need to lose 17 pounds. But if I do a sprint to HR at 135 then stop HR goes down to 95 in about 2 minutes.

In your case, if you are a beginner don't worry because with any kind of training program you will be well past this in a few months. But if you are working hard and this as been going on for 6 months then I'd worry that my training program s wrong. To make prograss yu should be workig out 3 times a week and doing all different intensities. maix it up. The reason is to give you body a "surprize" The modern word is "interval traning" but really it just means go fast then recover, then do a 30 second sprint then slow then do 5 minutes of mederate folowed by 30 second sprint then reast for 10 minutes and keep it randomized.

So maybe you don't need to do less intensity but just more different speeds.

One more thing, The slow parts of the interval training are important. Muscles including the heart get stonger only when resting and moving slow helps flush out chemicals that uild up durring the sprints. So there is real science in the "just mix it up" plan.

But it doe matter hw long this is going on. If you have been doing the "mix it up" or months and y get what yu describe, look for a profesional. But if you simply go "all out" on the trainer and that is all you do. That's not to best plan.

mpoublon

I'm in the same boat.
So a little background. I have been to a cardiologist, had EKG (looks good), had echo cardiogram (looks good) and I have similar HR (issues). When I ride I'm usually in zones 4 and 5:
My last 30 mile ride (15mph avg) zones were as follows:
89-106 zone 1 1%
107-124 zone 2 2%
125.141 zone 3 6%
142-159 zone 4 45%
>159 zone 5 46%
max 180
I'm 55 and not a slob
Every time I ride a 25+ mile ride with friends (15mph) it takes hours for my rate to come back down to what I consider normal ~70-75.
This past ride my rate stayed in the 90's for 6 hours and even at night my rate didn't come down till 4am (I woke up and checked my watch to see)
Dr says if I was over 100 after ride that would be a problem but I say otherwise. Something is wrong but I can't find the answer.
I will try extra hydration next ride to see but I don't think that's the problem. While I'm not out of breath during our rides, I just don't have the longevity when climbing hills etc.

ChrisAlbertson

I think your zone are wrong. My most accounts "max" HR is 220 minus your age. So at 55 you max HR is 165.

Also for a person who is reasonably fit 70 is a high resting HR. I'd expect 60 or in the 50s. I think this indicates you "volume per stroke" is low but still in the range of normal healthy people even if your volume per stroke is low for athletes. So the Dr. sees you as being "fine" Try wearing the HR monitor 24x7 and have it find your actual rest HR. Likely this happens after you wake up but are still laying flat in bed. It is really 70? I'd bet lower.

I think I'm going to try asking this question on a science forum. Why does the heart continue to beat fast after finishing exercise? I seem to be "normal" and the rate drops in a minute or so. But why even that? Does it try to correct the blood pH to some baseline? My guess is that something in the blood triggers the HR, CO2 levels (carbonic acid) or latic acid or some other byproduct of exercise. But I'm not even close to a biochemist. My theory is that the heart can't "know" anything about your legs except indirectly be what chemicals you legs dump into the blood. So it reacts to some signal.

So my guess is that if your HR is still high hours later it is because whatever your heart looks at in th blood is still there, nothing wrong with the heart itself. but as said, i'm no expert.

One final idea and this is from what I wrote above. If your only training method is to ride really fast for the whole time then stop. You are not training your body to recover. You have to literally "surprize" it with intervals that are short and long and to different zones. The body learns to adapt to being surprized. Normal road riding does this because of hills, cars, red lights and other real world randomness but trainers require you to make up your own randomness.

mpoublon

Thanks (you sound like something close to an expert ). And gives me some ideas
So let me clarify,
Max heart rate can be calculated with multiple metrics however I just choose 180 since that's where I peak just about every ride. So technically while the fomula 220-55 = 165 my max always shows up as 180. Hence my choice for 180 as my max (am I wrong?)
You are correct my resting is 60 (sleep and no activity but during the day sitting at a desk my HR is anywhere between 60-70). As I write this sitting in a chair I'm at 61 but I'm not surprised to see it at 70 during the course of the day.
I was hoping someone was experiencing the same thing as I and perhaps I could find it on this post. The echo cardiogram was very impressive (they measured everything real time valves, aorta, ventricles etc). At least I know nothing is wrong with the heart and now that you say it, perhaps it's chemical. I don't believe it's normal and I just don't want to be on the side of the road calling 911.

Thanks for the reply!

Carbonfiberboy 

The quoted formula is BS. It's an average over a zillion people, not a prediction. There's a big difference. Also, your max HR (MHR) is definitely not 180, either. MHR is almost impossible to get because the effort and pain is so extreme that almost no one either wants or is capable of going that hard on their bike. The feeling of MHR is that you are about to die. You've probably been panting very hard for at least 15 minutes while still continuing to increase effort until you almost black out, or actually do for a little bit. It feels like you are about to die. I've done this a few times over the past 20 years or so, just to see, so I know how it's done.

Now that we're done with that, the issue of why your HR continues high after a ride is still there. Possibly it's because you have considerable CO2 built up that your body is still trying to get rid of. You also may have low blood sugar. If it's either of those, you'll still be breathing harder than normal while your HR is high. Seems like that's not the case. Then it's possibly hormones of the adrenaline variety, adrenaline not being the only one. Those are the "fight or flight" hormones and they definitely raise the HR.

Your 46% in Z5 shows that your zones are absolute BS. If I ride my guts out, and I'm pretty strong, I might have 5% Z5 and 25% of time in Z4. I'd be averaging 16-17 mph in hilly terrain. I'm 74 and have a resting HR of 46-48, standing HR of 54, MHR of 149. I'm pretty close to the formula now, though in my 50s my MHR was much higher than the formula. If I ride really hard for say 3 hours, it'll take over 30 minutes for my HR to drop below 100, but in 2 hours standing HR will be down to 70. Some of that is dehydration, which always happens to some extent during a long hard ride.

Seems most probable that's it's some hormone thing. I'd try an endocrinologist. Whom you might get to see in June, eh? Meantime, I wouldn't worry about it.