Originally Posted by
Iride01
So is the 130 max HR a cap by your cardiologist? Or is that all you want to do? If you are constraining that for non medical reasons, then that might be part of the equation for the thing you wish to solve.
Although I can't quite rationalize it in my head yet, perhaps underperforming is what you perceive as overtraining
And then there is also the medication thing that probably needs more thorough investigation and discussion of the side effects and expected effects.
the overtraining question was sort of a shot in the dark - a "good" explanation for slowing down a bit. another way to state it would be 1) why am i getting slightly slower? if it's because power is down (and not random other factors), 2) is it because of overtraining? seems like the consensus is no, the level of riding i've been doing isn't overtraining.
if i look at just the current bike, current power meter, after a fitting and everything dialed in and the PM was correctly reading both sides (had some issues on earlier rides which required correction), there does seem to be a gradual downward trend, but the current dip isn't any steeper than one from a few months ago, which to be honest i didn't notice. so maybe a case of TMI / navel gazing.
as for heart rate, i did go and make a scatter chart for heart rate vs power for the strongest hour of the same set of rides. i think strongest hour is a better metric since most rides involve some slow spots (crossing the golden gate on a crowded day, getting out of downtown traffic etc) and of course a 6 hour ride will have a much lower average power than a one hour ride, but in most 6 hour rides i do try and start off pretty hard. the expected correlation is there, with 20 BPM (100-120) corresponding to a jump in power from 190 to 230. chicken or egg question ... are the recent rides lower power because my heart rate is low, or is my heart rate low because i can't push hard enough to get it into the zone!
my doctors advice (beyond "don't exercise hard at all") has been to keep the average in the 100-110 range for any extended period, and below 130 at all costs since i have a couple of persistent arrhythmia including some "slow" ventricular tachycardia which tends to get stuck at 132-135bpm. there is no direct relationship between heart rate and the ongoing damage that overexertion causes for someone with my condition, but since most sports don't involve power meters or any other way to measure cardiac strain, heart rate is the proxy they use. other than actual full blown ventricular tachycardia, i don't think my heart rate has been over 140 in 10 years, and over 130 is a very, very rare situation. if i'm doing a nice hard climb or flat sprint and i get over 130, i usually back off just a bit unless i feel really good. i truly do not know what would happen if i just said "**** it," went out to my favorite 2,000' climb, and hammered it as hard as i possibly could. most likely i'd be so short of breath that i'd have to ease off after a very short time, and i'd end up at my 220w steady cruise up. there's a decent chance that my ICD would think something bad was happening and shock me, so i'm not going to try!
