Low HR on outdoor rides

I have been using the low-volume half distance try plan for training. On my saturday/sunday long rides(2-3.5H) I have been hitting the high end of my target watt range, but by my HR has been hanging around 115-120.

Should I be increasing my watts during the ride to increase my HR, but still stay in the Aerobic zone? I know I don’t want my HR to get into Z3/Z4+

Maybe first check the battery and strap of your hr monitor

  • You need to provide some reference of your Max HR and/or Lactate Threshold HR for those to be of any real use.
  • Then including that HR value above with specific power zone % to FTP is a useful clarification vs guessing within the typical Z2 range.
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Sorry, I never got a alert that either ofyour replied and though I had a empty thread.

Battery and Strap are in good shape. All other activities and indoor rides seem “normal”

My max HR is 193.

Z1 97-116
Z2 116-135
Z3 135-154
Z4 154-174
Z5 174+

Has this changed or are you just wondering?

An unexpectedly low HR during exercise could be related to fatigue (over training/under recovery).

For an endurance ride it seems like a heartrate firmly in Z2 is a good thing, it’s also seems normal (for me) for my HR to be lower outside or at least higher power being easier to produce at specific heart rates.

Have you updated your ftp lately? Might just be that your cardio has progressed.

  1. Check your HR zones. My max HR is 199 and my zone 2 is 117-155 according to Strava.

  2. Low HR can be due to training fatigue (as previously mentioned), temperature, sleep, and some other factors.

Do you use the same power meter inside and outside? If not, have you checked if the readings match? It’s possible that they’re off from each other.

Whats your resting ?

Have you tried doing a talk test to check your Z2, like not somebody said Zone are descriptive not pescriptive, where did you get these numbers ?

This hr-calculator (that I picked at random) gives a completely different set of zones for you

Same bike and power meter indoor/outdoor.

No change to my FTP, so it might be too low.

A little more background, I was training for The grand rapids Tri and my last 3 long rides before tapering were all in that low HR range.

I think at this point, it is worth re testing my max HR and making sure my zones are all correct.

It might just be a big difference in core body temp outside (you are way hotter inside) even if you can’t feel it

PPP: If you know your power, then at best heart rate is redundant, but at worst it is deceiving,

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Its hard to say @jlawn if you are comfortably hitting power outside it could be a sign you are just getting fittter, yet on the other hand it could be a sign that your worn out and cant raise it. Then again it might just mean something else. A trained coach might be able to take a look at your training history and take a more educated guess.