Heart Rate Up, After Three (3) Days Off - - Normal?

Training
1

My heart rate was up, ~10 BPM, after taking three days off from exercise. Is this normal, as I expected the opposite

Me: Male, 62 Years. 6 feet (183cm), 210 pounds (95kg)

Normal Weekly Load: 10 hours, 650 TSS, over 6 days.

Taking more than a day off is uncommon for me, so I was looking for the experience of others.

Some other contributing “suspects”:

Alcohol - Three drinks during two of those days, which is more than usual, for me. However, this may have led to some dehydration.
Sleep - Window moved later, but it was the same 8 hours per night.
Weight - Stable.

2

The only normal is your normal when it comes to such things

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3

Could be underlying infection?

Alcohol is something I used to have no issues with during the week as I didnt feel any effects the day after, but WHOOP fairly quickly spotted and then averaged a 12% drop in HRV if I have 2 drinks or more on a night which was interesting.

65 TSS/hr average sounds beefy though, that your weekly amount all year round ?

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4

65 TSS/hr average sounds beefy though, that your weekly amount all year round ?

Since I have been retired ( 2.5 years), yes. My riding buds have suggested that I overdo it, but there are a couple of factors:

  1. I live in the mountains. Everything is 100 feet per mile in elevation.
  2. I like to ride well, but I don’t race. It’s as much therapy as fitness for me. IOW: I don’t mind ridnig tired.
5

Is this your resting heart rate or heart rate during exercise? As others have noted, the only normal here is “your” normal. But speaking for myself only, a few days off the bike usually sees my resting HR drop slightly, while it slightly increases my HR for a given effort when I get back on the bike. But these changes are all easily overridden by external factors like sleep, caffeine, illness, or even just stress.

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6

Heart rate during exercise. As you say, my resting heart rate did drop a bit while off-the-bike.

I did an easy “Train Now” on my first day back; that’s where I saw it bump up a bit.

I’ll keep tracking to see how it trends on this first week back. I plan to do about 4,500 feet tomorrow, so that might add some clues.

7

Yes totally normal for most hard training athletes. There are a lot of potential reasons such as blood plasma volume fluctuation, hormonal balance, muscle fueling changes, among other things above my pay grade.

With time off you’ll notice your resting heart rate drops for a time but then will start to increase with too much time off. Activity heart rate will be elevated for a few days compared to “normal” if you rarely take time off and then return to training. External factors can also influence this but assuming there are none you will still see this.

If you take time off and return to training and don’t see increased heart rate I’d probably argue you’ve dug a big hole and perhaps should take more time off. But this can be a bit more personal so would take some historical data to confirm.

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