So this is in line with what I “feel” is the problem.
I feel my mind starts writing checks that my body cannot cash. I feel my legs are winding down, before I reach peak respiration/HR max.
Maybe it’s just will power? But as I’ve said, I can reach those states during other activities. And when I do VO2 intervals, I get nauseated and light headed, and generally feel real bad after doing them. So I hope I’m pushing hard enough.
So if I am not an adequately trained cyclist, what does this indicate I need to focus on?
I am struggling to find the paper. But if my memory is correct. NTNU & CERG did a lot of research into 4X4 intervals years ago. The subject were “average Joe’s”. They did the work intervals between 85% & 95% of HRmax. They found little to be gained by doing it over 95%. Again, this was done on normal people, not high performing athletes, and it was running not cycling.
I do the intervals at around 100RPM. I am on a fluid trainer, so don’t have the ability to pinpoint my cadence as it is a product of gearing & wheel speed. I could try to push it higher, but that feels very unnatural to me. I don’t do any roadbiking, all my riding in the real world is on my mountain bike on singletrack. So my self selected cadence is pretty low.
Remember, you are training your VO2 system and almost all training is “unnatural”. Not many of us ride in the real world the same way we ride in training.
Because rowing is a full body exercise then I’m not surprised that you get a higher max HR during it. Just like most people generally have higher HR’s during running than they do cycling.
But in my experience, I’ve only really ever hit a max HR in cycling during a race and an effort that was something like 1-2 min all out and then a sprint for the line at the end. I’m not sure I’ve ever hit max HR during a steady power effort.
I raised my HRmax this year by 1 beat! Woot! It was during an anaerobic training block focused on 1min power. New max was from an outdoor empty-the-tank effort (still didn’t get the KOM!).
You might not be able to hit your true max on a trainer.
In what sense? Do you just mean that you wouldn’t accumulate much time (this would certainly be the case for me; actually I don’t even get to 95% in a typical VO2max session unless I’m very fresh).
Examples i know of is in the book “the science of winning” olbrecht noticed thst aerobic capacity would go down with his athletes if they overdid their hard sessions.
Dr seiler notices that the Norwegian xc skiers are told to stay out of zone 5. It probably has to do with the balance of overall workload, and possibly overstressing yourself.
I just set my HR max record at the end of my ride today. It went from 173 to 174!
I raced a segment for a couple minutes, and at the end I coasted for a while because of getting stuck behind traffic, but then did one more hard effort. My heartrate got to its max just after the end of the segment.
I had been riding above threshold for approximately 5 minutes before that segment. Earlier in the ride, I did an above-threshold effort for something like 15 minutes and I was feeling wasted on the way home.
Maybe it something about the periods of coasting right at the end that did it?
I remember something like this from Arild Tveiten on the TTS podcast. I don’t think it was really about avoiding Z5 altogether, but just not going too hard.
Anyway, I still don’t know what works for me; in previous years I’ve had periods with “mild zone 5” and periods with “killer zone 5” and somehow I’ve always kept improving.
It’s funny how different the views are because if you open some other thread here you get told that you’re wasting your time if you are not in the worst pain you can possibly inflict on yourself.
Or is that just HR drift? Muscle fatigue, having to recruit more and more muscle fibers etc?
I find that the HR can easily go to >90% of max in such cases, but my respiration rate is no where near “VO2 Max” levels.
They also race a lot too, so for us who don’t race as frequently, we need to find that balance of hard enough to get a good response, and not so hard that it detriments the rest of your training. It’s still a hard balance IME, as there’s lots of other life stressors at play and most of us who are uncoached don’t pull back when we should.
Yes absolutely. The fact that these people train/race on average 3 hours/day could make correlation between what works for them versus what works for an amateur like myself, who’s only doing 3.5-6 hr/week tricky at best.
