I know that heart rate isn't very fancy here but I did a crit last sunday and while the speed and watts were stable for the whole race (1st, 2nd and 3rd 30 min's were almost equal re. speed and Watt avg) my heart rate went down considerably. This was accompanied by a less stressed feeling in my lungs. My legs felt good all the way but my breathing was hard as can be for the 1st 20 min's and then eased down, likewise did the heart rate.
How come that I was able to produce the same power with less (felt) effort -RPE down from 9 to 7 on the 10 scale ? Bad warm up, typical for crit racing (I'm fairly new with masters racing) or anything that is obvious but that I don't see?
For the sake of seeing it I attached the wko graph. It has a 1min smoothing on it. BTW my FTP is set at 295W and the 60min MMP NP is 294W . I guess this means 1) my FTP is set correctly and 2) this race had me on the verge
How come that I was able to produce the same power with less (felt) effort -RPE down from 9 to 7 on the 10 scale ? Bad warm up, typical for crit racing (I'm fairly new with masters racing) or anything that is obvious but that I don't see?
For the sake of seeing it I attached the wko graph. It has a 1min smoothing on it. BTW my FTP is set at 295W and the 60min MMP NP is 294W . I guess this means 1) my FTP is set correctly and 2) this race had me on the verge