Average HR as % of LT during SR Series
 

This might be useful to anyone aiming to complete a Super Randonneur Series. I'm trying to monitor my HR during each Brevet so that I can quickly recover and continue my conditioning for the next longer one. I've been without a HR monitor for the last few years, my LT is not what it once was, and my paper training journals are long gone to the recycler so I am a little lost. I recently got a Garmin Explore 2 and I plan to use the HR monitor plus the navigation features. If you have an idea what your LT is, monitor your HR, and have done a SR, can you share your Average Brevet HR as a percentage of LT heart rate for each distance? I assume Avg. HR will decrease as the brevets get longer -- Especially from 200k to the 400 and 600 -- but maybe not.

The difference between me at ftp and 60% of ftp is less than 20bpm. So hr would be pointless. My understanding is that cardiac drift makes HR very confusing on long rides. I assume you could accommodate it, but I'm not sure how.

If I could settle on equipment, I would have a power meter on my rando bike.

I have been looking into this myself recently. Partly based on experience (but not the level of experience you have asked for), and partly based on research, an average HR for randonees will be roughly 70% to 80% of LT2 HR. Longer events require lower HR, obviously. This is due to fatigue and down-regulation of the sympathetic nervous system. HR drift is a factor early in the ride (first 6 hours, let's say), but it stabilizes because fatigue and decrease in SNS are working in the opposite direction. The amount of cardiac drift depends on a lot of factors - training, blood sugar, temperature, hydration, etc., but eventually fatigue will win out and HR will fall.

Looking at it as a percentage of heart rate reserve is another method. In those terms it's probably between 50% and 60%.

In terms of max HR, it's between 60% and 70%.

I need to read up on approximating LT2 (which I gather is closer to FTP than LT1). More recent endurance training research focuses on power so I guess I should try to gauge my effort over 100s of miles wrt to LT2 since I do not have a power meter. The last time I looked at this stuff was when "The Cyclists Training Bible" was pretty new.

LT2 and FTP are close to each other. Some would say they are essentially the same thing, just measured/established by different metrics (power/ duration vs. blood lactate concentration). They are both in the neighborhood of 86% to 90% of max heart rate.

Avg rando pace is going to be roughly at LT1 for shorter brevets. And below LT1 for the longer ones.

I don't think it's possible to be more specific as there is a lot of individual variability.

My practice was to go hard near the end of each brevet, noting the max HR I was able to achieve. That would be my hard upper limit on the next brevet in the SR series. Worked like a charm. IMO upper limit is more important than average and this is stupid simple to do.

The thing is, you won't know your average HR until the brevet is over, much too late to change it. And you sure as heck don't want to hold the same HR of whatever for the whole brevet. You'll use too much energy on flats and not enough on the climbs, so you'll be slower than necessary. It's good to get one's butt off the saddle. And of course you'd have no way of knowing if the HR number you picked out of the air is in fact correct. Hopefully you'll have done a number of at least centuries if not doubles and have a pretty good idea of how to approach a 200k.

Knowing someone else's average HR is useless, just as useless as knowing your own. I wouldn't worry too much about recovery. Hopefully you know what to do to recover and what the signs of not recovering are. Main thing is take care of your body during, especially your butt, and not run out of energy during.

Back when I used heart rate for pacing / informational purposes on some brevets, I did like you did and mostly used it as a way to limit my effort on harder climbs. My rule of thumb was to stay at least 5 bpm below AT2, preferably more like 10 bpm below. This seemed to keep me out of significant trouble. The avg heart rate numbers that I observed at the end of the ride were mostly just a point of fact. Like you implied, unless your ride is very flat, one cannot really do minute-by-minute pacing by HR. If one tried, you'd have to grant yourself a fairly wide window of HR.

200k 122-131 bpm ave

300k 131 bpm

400k 118 bpm

600k 122 bpm on 400k and 93 bpm on 200k the next day. I did another one with an average of 98 bpm.

1200K: PBP was about 103 bpm average IIRC (I have the file on another device) with around 51 hours moving time on a recumbent.

164 years old. Max HR 175. Resting HR varies from 50-55 but might be lower if I took it in bed in the morning. FTP/LT2 HR is 153 bpm with FTP/CP just over 300 last year. My LT or VT1 HR is around 120 bpm, this is the point where my lactate is 1.5 mmol/. It is kind of hard to use other's data. Hope this helps, I can't really offer any additional insight.

Steamer's ranges fit my experience but I tend to be on the lower side of his ranges. I also do like CCFboy, going harder on hills (tempo to low threshold) and once I hit a good rate of speed on the descent, I rest. On flats I keep it down a bit.

If I understand the objective is determining recovery status, so, I would suggest using heart rate variability, sleep status, mood, and for those with a PM, adding training stress balance to the mix. With PM, I try to keep it under 70% of FTP initially and more like 65% dropping down like a melting ice cube as time goes on.

Do you have avg. hr for your 2, 3, 4, and 600k in your SR series? And your LT during that season? If not, that’s fine. You do you. Simple or not.

:) Sorry, that was 15 or so years, several computers and software changes ago. I did find records from a few brevets from which I saved summaries for some reason:
a hilly 200k, 6000', 86% of LT, 7:21/8:02 saddle/elapsed time in '07
a hilly 300k (196mi), 9700', 81% of LT, 12:02/13:30 saddle/elapsed time in '07
a flat 400k, 4600', 82% of LT, 13:17/14:55 saddle/elapsed time in '07
a mountain 400k, 12,000', 81% of LT, 15:37/18:30 saddle/elapsed time in '08

Hope this is of interest, though as I said, average HRs are not really interesting during a brevet. My equipment wouldn't even show an average 'til it was over. Except for the last 100k on that flat 400, these were ridden essentially solo.

Cool. For my peace of mind, I’m interpreting avg. HR as a percentage of LT as a measure of overall effort. I have a tendency of turning timed events into a race and I don’t want to over do it when 4 weeks after an extraordinarily long ride, I have to do an even longer one.

I know what you mean. However, I always TT'd my events and brevets with an emphasis on short stops at controls. That's where one can save big time. As it is said, there's no slower speed than stopped. Getting close to a control, I'd make a list of things I wanted to do in order of criticality. I didn't always get all of them done. However I never overcooked it and always had some good efforts left all the way to the finish. Most of that is training and fueling. Pacing kinda takes care of itself as long as one keeps one's leash on until one gets into the swing of it.

I never an an issue with being tired for the next one, more the reverse. The idea is that every excursion into the Dark Side makes you stronger. So just go there. There will be "discomfort."

I knew you were old, but this makes it all the more impressive. :innocent:

It's funny you should say that, because I have read the advice that you should aim to hold your HR constant over very long efforts.

In my own experience (which is much less extensive than many of y'all's), I've found that I can't hold my HR to a narrow range moment-by-moment just because it drains all the fun out of the ride. I do have RwGPS announce my average HR over 15-minute intervals and try to back off if I'm running hot over that period, and I'm not bad at estimating my intensity even without that.

The problem with holding HR the same on climbs is that your finish time is highly dependent on how fast you climb. OTOH, I see people going anaerobic on climbs and then oftentimes I catch them later. Mostly these effects can be ameliorated by eating after a hard climb, but a lot of people don't do that.