HR of use in Tempo/CP 90?

I have set my (indoor) training levels by power, and am wondering to what extent HR should be considered in a tempo workout. That is, if the HR starts climbing too high (i.e near threshold), what might this indicate? I train for ultra events and try to do as long of a tempo workout as I can manage at least 1X a week (2-3X in Base 2/3). Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks!

The only thing I use heart rate for is monitoring if I am overtrained or not. If my morning heart rate is really elevated or if I can't get my heartrate up while attempting an interval or in a race repeatedly then I can usually diagnose myself as overtrained. Either you can attain your goals for CP 90 or not. For me monitoring heartrate is not very useful. Indoors, it could mean so many different things that you should not use it to monitor your CP 90. It could be that you just don't have enough fans on you.

to clarify, none of these points mean you are overtrained and HR has little or nothing to do with overtraining. Morning HR may be increased when you are running an infection, whereas when you are overtrained your HR maybe increased or even decreased. Likewise, just because your HR maybe depressed at a specific power output does not mean you are overtrained. for e.g., my HR at TTpower runs ~ 10 - 15 b/min less if i ride TTs on consecutive days even though my power is the same.

You are overtrained if your performance is decreased (i.e., your power output is significantly depressed).

In regard to the OP i prescribe training at all levels by power output, your HR can drift upwards during a session and this is pretty normal. As the previous poster mentioned make sure you have a good fan on you and you stay hydrated.

ric

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Doh, right, I thought that and did not write it and left out that part! Thanks.

Watoni, conceptually, this is essentially what I would say as well. Power is power, and should always be the first method for guiding your training. Heart rate is not useless, but as Woofer points out, it's the HR's relation to power that is of interest, not the other way around. But due to HR's inherent variability, a few bpm up or down is nothing to be concerned with.
It's indeed likely that you are just not cooling yourself enough, or hydrating enough, while riding indoors; especially if your HR respondes normally to your workout during the first 30-60min, and then slowly gets closer and closer to your threshold as the ride progresses (as opposed to not ever reaching the appropriate HR zone for a given power output at all).

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Many thanks to all! Now let's see if I can make my tempo range (75-90% of 40km power) into more like CP 180! The goal for tonight is two 1.5 hour blocks with about 5-10 minutes of easy spinning in between ...

I admire your self discipline. I want to pull my hair out after about five minutes on the trainer. Only by distracting myself with videos can I force myself to complete sessions.

Videos are key, as is a good trainer/ergometer.

Results (tempo HR for me is roughly 85-94% of 40km TT HR, though I go for watts first):

Day 1: 2X1.5 hours "tempo", with HR increasing about 10 bpm for the second 1.5 in order to maintain watts. Finish with 20 min threshold. 1 hour of total warm-up/down

Day 2: Easy

Day 3: Total of 2.25 hours tempo out of 4 hours, with 40 minutes threshold (20 minutes at beginning and end of quality work). HR not as elevated as Day 1.

Day 4: 2.5 hours total, 1.5 hours tempo (almost 95%+ in "tempo" HR range).

Day 5: Rest, i.e. work late

wow thats a lot of tempo/threshold work.
my coach is having me do a total of 3.5 hrs tempo this week, 14 hrs total bike time. my power is shooting up, today it was 15watts higher than last fridays tempo workout.

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Well, it's mostly tempo with a touch of threshold. Normally folks do their 2X20s or whatever a couple times a week. I should get some new testing results this week to see if the power ranges need to be reset. Increasing by 15 watts is really good progress, it seems. Good work!

From what Rick said about this power level being sustainable for roughly 3 hours, it seems as if that is what I should be shooting for. Most of my events are gran fondos, double centuries, etc. with 4-6,000 meters of climbing. Tempo appears to be the key to surviving such events since you don't really need to respond to anybody's "attacks" and need to be steady rather than explosive. Of course, upping your threshold so that you can ride for that long without going too far in the red zone during tough climbs is also important, but my current thinking is mucho tempo!

Actually, the physiological adaptations from both types of training are nearly identical. However 'fartlek'-type tempo training tends to recruit a wider range of fibre-types and therefore better simulates day-to-day riding and road racing, while L4 intervals tend to recruit a narrower band of fibres and therefore mimics TTs and long, steady climbs.
Sounds like you're mixing the two up quite nicely though .
L.

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