Originally Posted by
rsbob
Have been a doing a bit of reading and video watching and it appears that the current approach toward training for most athletes is the ladder or pyramid. I keep running into this methodology which is contrary to what I have been doing, which is always push myself except when really exhausted then take it very easy. So now it will be zone 1-2 four days and do zone 5 two days and a rest day. Have also started measuring resting heart rate when I first awaken to determine if I may be overdoing it. Also trying, like today, to take a complete day off - except for weights, core and shoulders/arms. Have always resisted a structured program, but now is the time to give it a shot.
Did a heavy Zwift session the day before yesterday with an average HR for an hour and a half of 160, staying in threshold and tempo the entire time. Started feeling twinges in my chest which have since stopped. Had the same thing occur when I first got Zwift two years ago and went absolutely crazy pushing myself and ended up getting a EKG and other studies to see if I was damaging myself. All the results came back negative but didn’t like having those minor pains, so backed way off. Looks like running my heart that hard for so long is not a good idea as my body is telling me it is not happy so will moderate my efforts to either decrease duration or effort.
I've had similar "twinges." I talked to my doctor about it. He said if it were your heart acting up, you'd know it. If the ECG didn't show damage, there wasn't any. The most likely explanation, said my doctor, is that we had some minor cramps in our chest muscles from all the hard breathing. My doctor is a hard riding cyclist in his late 60s. He did RAMROD with me last year, at least with me until I got dropped on the final 3000' climb.
That said, you were being um, stupid? Don't do that. Sure route to an aFib diagnosis sometime in the future, maybe not for another decade, but it'll happen. Structured training is the way to go. My damage is probably from doing competitive group rides with folks who were younger than I, for years. We'd start with 35-40 mile rides this time of year and work up to 100+ in late summer. I had a lot of fun, though now I pay for it. Outside of that one day a week of max efforts, I've always done structured training with a year long periodized plan. I started by getting The Cyclist's Training Bible, absorbing the principles, and writing my own plan. All the plans I see online are short, up to only 12 weeks, which is nothing. One needs at least a 45 week plan, figuring one will want a month or so's break with just random moderate efforts or maybe a tour. I switch to hiking training and do a 10-day backpack with my wife every year. That sure shows up the weakness of only doing cycling training.
I use TrainingPeaks Premium and fill in the workouts I'm going to do ahead of time, a couple of weeks or so, just to keep the fitness increase going up at a slow, steady pace, and putting in easy weeks for recovery. Then I can look back at past years and see where it went wrong, too.