Hey everyone,
I’m heading into a multi-day ultra race next week. I’ll be recording everything with my Garmin Edge 1040 and I have power data from my pedals. For the sake of comfort and keeping things as simple as possible, I’m considering leaving my heart rate strap at home.
I enjoy tracking data and I’d like to monitor the impact of the event on my training load. From what I understand, TrainerRoad calculates load based on power.
Am I missing out on anything important by not taking the HR strap?
Are there other aspects I should consider that might be useful or interesting from a data/tracking perspective?
I don’t think it’s a good idea. Heart rate might be useful when you want to analyze your effort.
If you think you keeping track of heart rate during the race might be harmful (e. g. psychologically), then configure screens so that heart rate is not displayed.
I’d argue that watching HR is more important and a better pacing strategy in an ultra than power data anyway. It’s fine to have the power data, but you’ll likely be spending a lot of time in zone 1/2, and HR is often a better way to track those types of efforts. Especially since you’re likely going to be really fatigued at some point and trying to stay at a certain power output might actually dig you into a hole..
To counter the folks telling you to bring the HR strap…
On a multi-day event, your HR numbers will be completely useless after the first day. I’ve got my HR numbers from multiple events over the past few years and they are useless for analysis purposes. Max HR often drops by 20+ BPM over the course of the event.
To be fair, your power numbers will also be mostly useless after the first day as well. When I’m putting in 12+ hours riding per day, seeing the numbers is often depressing so I remove them from my map screen.
Hi, totally see where you are coming from and I’m the same.
Wouldn’t and didn’t wanted to burden me with a HR strap over multiday events. I typically do cycling stuff like Transcontinental Race, Atlas Mountain Race, Badlands etc.
The last thing you want to have there all sweaty or cold is getting annoyed by a hr strap which inevitably will loose it’s correct fit or you will lay on and basically wear 24/7.
While I agree with the one poster saying the data is useless in a normal training and even day race context it is indeed very interesting data as it shows you your internal load.
For cycling (and off-road cycling especially and even for the infamous gravel parcours of road races like the TCR) you would often encounter hike-a-bike stretches. So you would have no Strain data from your powermeter there… but you could use a TRIMP approach with your HR data. Mind you - this would be artificially lowered because of your most probably subdued hr-response. But you could work with that.
And - you could precisely see this and it’s amount instead of just musing about it.
Since my previous Polar H10 strap broke just recently I now purchased a Coros Heart Rate monitor for the arm. So yes, optical measurement but apparently as robust as it gets and way better than on the wrist by all those watches. I will see whether I like this more and want to use it for Ultra Racing. It’s disadvantage for this: it doesn’t uses coin cells but need to be charged via a special USB-cable. Runtime is given as 38 hours which will mean you would need to charge it every two days at least.
I had an experience last year in a 500-mile event where HR provided very useful info that I should have recognized but didn’t. I live at sea level, but most of the event was at around 7000’. I didn’t account for the altitude change in early pacing, and paced around my normal (sea level) power level for that type of race. I noticed my HR was between 10 and 20 BPM faster than I would normally expect, but I ignored that data point and paid the price during the last part of the race. I messed up on the pacing, but the HR data sent a clear message that this was happening and I failed to notice or interpret the data. My take-away is that having the info available may or may not be helpful, but what is it going to hurt?
Heart rate gives valuable information during ultras that you can act on to improve your performance.. But you need to recognise what it’s telling you. Since you don’t have previous HR data for ultras then it’s likely you won’t understand what it’s telling you. Thus up to you whether to go with HR or not, so it can help you on future ultras.
