HRMs are least useful when most needed

[cheapie]

while i agree it's not the perfect tool, it certainly helps me stay in the zone i want to be in. if i'm not paying attention, i can attack a hill too hard and have nothing left at the top.

i don't have zone alarms set but i do glance down when i'm climbing to make sure i'm not over 195 or so. i rode monday and looked down to see 201. that's way too high. i kept going because i knew my buddies would have to stop at the top and take a breather. mtn biking of course.

 

[RapDaddyo]

The overreliance on any single tool is not going to yeild the best results, whether it's an HRM, power meter, Borg Scale or whatever.

Nonsense. Give me a PM and you can keep everything else. I only use my HRM because I already own it. I wouldn't pay $.02 for one if I didn't. My main problem is that I want more than just my current or average power. The exploitation of power data is still in the cave man era.

 

[Phil Stone]

I guess I use hills for intervals also, I call these rides miscellaneous anaerobic effort rides (or 'Tempo hills' for short). For me HR data has always been just an indicator of condition not something that tells me how strong I am. For me I know I will never see a HR above 190 , I will never be able to ride 4hrs at 170 & 150 will always result in a good solid training ride thats perfectly in the middle of Zone3 (Power or HR). I know that at least 1 beat per second recovery is needed to be race fit (for me). I know that HR lag later into the season indicates a state of over racing (easy in Belgium with 100 races a year).

Accurate power has replaced speed but unless you actually go flat out Power can not really replace the HRM. Even race power data (I do not ride TTs) is limited to fatigue. The harder efforts are often made in the closing stages of a race, a time when the cyclist may have been on his limit for 3-4hrs Prior. You can get some great data from races but tactics (the main one being trying to do as little as possible) result in many races having similar average/normalized watts with the actual 'result' being the benchmark.

So I feel for a rider like me that hates stopwatches tests etc the HRM combined with Power is the way to go. You have the HR based rules to stop you from training tired, Aerobic Zones that can be left alone as Zone 1-2-3-4 power & HR are the same thing but as power changes weekly & HR does not you stick with HR for the zones....simple.

 

[RapDaddyo]

Well, having ridden with a PM for only ~240 hours, I consider myself to be a power newbie. Nonetheless, I have studied my power and HR data enough to have drawn some conclusions about the value of my HR data. First, HR seems to work well enough for training at levels 1-3 (per Andy Coggan's schema), but then again RPE works equally well at those levels. For levels 4-7, where it matters, HR is lousy because it is inconsistent. An example is a 17.5mi hillclimb TT I rode in late Sept. In the critical stages of the race (mile 8 to the finish), my NP/HR numbers are plotted in the chart below. If you can see a relationship there, you're a better man than I. If the relationship between two variables is inconsistent, I have to choose which one to base my intensity on. For power management, it's a slam-dunk decision -- HR is out, P is in and I wish I had NP. In fact, my entire wish list for additional on-bike data revolves around power and power management. Not one single item on my wish list relates to HR. As far as being a benchmark of my condition, I don't disagree that my HR is higher at the same power levels and retards more slowly when I am unfit. But, I have other ways to know I am unfit (power and RPE), so the question is whether HR data provide me with any unique insight to my state of fitness not available from other data. I think not.

 

[acoggan]

Perhaps because the winter has just started ?

The rest of my comments are based on the latest almost religious trend for riders & some coaches with a financial stake in a power based stress score to start preaching that we do not need a HRM anymore. .

This, from the guy who takes every chance he can to sing the praises of trainers made by Tacx, with whom he apparently has a financial relationship?

Just for the record: I don't, at least at present, have any financial stake in a "power based stress score", nor have I ever preached that people shouldn't use heart rate monitors. For that matter, neither has Hunter (although he does have a financial stake in TSS).

 

[RapDaddyo]

HRMs are dirt cheap and readily available. One doesn't have to have a lot of justification for investing less than $100 in a bike computer. If HRMs provide any data of any value whatsoever, why not have one? But, that's really a distraction. The future is power data and if anyone thinks we have taken the exploitation of power data to its logical end, they are grossly mistaken. I have a very, very long wish list of power-related data, both on- and off-bike. I'd send my list to Andy if I knew how.

 

[acoggan]

I'd send my list to Andy if I knew how.

acoggan at earthlink dot net

(BTW, the yet-to-be released Ergomo Pro incorporates "on-the-fly" calculation of normalized power, intensity factor, and training stress score.)

 

[RapDaddyo]

acoggan at earthlink dot net

(BTW, the yet-to-be released Ergomo Pro incorporates "on-the-fly" calculation of normalized power, intensity factor, and training stress score.)

Thanks. I'm updating the document today and will send it tonight. I had heard about the Ergomo features. I think I'm a bit further down the road than that.

 

[SolarEnergy]

I know a good female cyclist that train, and race unplugged. No HR nor Power data. Her name is Genevieve Jeanson


Don't shoot on me, I am not trying to make a point here.

 

[SolarEnergy]

In fact, I think someone that freshly got into the sport of cycling, and train seriously, can have a lot of fun with a HR monitor. You know, when you begin something, former runner for instance, you want to see first before investing $600 on a hub. Early in the one's career, increases in speed are quite cheap, due to the improvement in economy/efficiency.

Seeing the average speed improve, given a steady HR range, can be motivating (of course, seeing the power output increasing is also very motivating).

But after a while improvements come at a cost, at the cost of an increase in HR, among other things. I am not sure the relation between HR and Power is perfecly linear. Then power readout becomes the best way to get feed back during and after the effort.

But HR still means something to me, specially "after the ride" avg HR. During the intense efforts, I tend not to look at HR, as it tends to scare me