VO2 Max HR for Sweetspot

A question for the hive mind.

Have been a long time TR user. Started SSBLV about a week ago after doing my own thing which was mainly polarised training.

Had a Norman Clyde +1 on Sat but had to pull the plug about half way as was really fatigued. Today I had Truchas -3 and I really found it hard, maxxing my HR out around 95% max HR.

I am in a stressful period with work and a house move, and if I’m honest my PLs I think flatter my abilities. I am training on a new trainer (Elite Direto XR) but did a ramp on that before starting training. I must admit it’s harder than my Wattbike Atom.

My Garmin 945 states the ride as VO2 Max and has suggested 3.5 days of recovery!

I could have a low level Infection (I feel fine) but could be just stressed out with life I guess.

Question then. Should I abandon this week, get rested and restart my plan fresh in 7 days (or whenever I feel better), or do the next session, see how that goes and let AT assess on my behalf?

TBH I don’t find AT that great. Adaptation is slow and it feels like it is prone to enabling over training.

Anyway, thanks for reading, have a great day.

Hi, it’s about 158. That said, today I was at roughly 90-95% FTP and sitting at between 160-164bpm. I would expect to be at around 10bpm lower.

I’ve looked at HR:Pwr on intervals.icu and in fact my HR is higher than this time last year. Perhaps I’ll knock my FTP down 5% until my next ramp test and see what happens.

Im a little confused. You say it adapts slow but it also flatters your abilities. Perhaps its slow because its pacing with your progression? Are you being honest with your survey responses?

As far as you feeling right now, stress is stress so if you are adding stress from work it would be a good idea to reduce stress elsewhere. And if you are feeling sick, thats stress as well as your body is trying to resolve something in fighting the sickness. Id ease up this week and reevaluate next week. If your hr is drifting on sweetspot thats a sign your ftp is too high.

It doesn’t just adapt up, but also down… My point being that I do wonder if my PLs are higher than they should be, but I guess I did the sessions so maybe not.

Definitely honest. Today was very hard so marked as such. I could probably have done maybe one more interval but I’d have been toast.

I agree about it going down. I cant seem to get mine to go down.

Typically when you’re stressed/ill/underrecovered is that your resting HR is higher, but during exercise, you struggle to get it up. This sounds more like you were riding at too high a power. Maybe the calibration is off?

Heart rate can be very hard to interpret as it depends on a whole lot of factors (including but not limited to sleep/rest, illness, stress and training status). When you say you are in a stressful phase, it is important to ask yourself whether training adds to the stress or helps you relieve stress.

Speaking for myself, training is a very important outlet for me to manage my stress. But sometimes that is outweighed by the additional stress and/or lack of sleep I incur by sticking to a training plan.

For me, sleep is my number 1 concern. If I slept less than 7 hours the night before, I do not allow myself to train. The purpose is two-fold: I want to make sure I am rested and also establish a positive feedback loop. Ideally, I need more than 7:30 hours, sometimes 8:00 hours. Everything is better if I sleep more: I am more patient with my kids and my wife, training is better and I feel much, much better as a human being.

As a result I’d probably reduce the volume and go to maintenance mode. E. g. instead of 1-hour workouts, try 45- or even 30-minute workouts. Make them super easy. I would also consider only doing 2 workouts a week rather than 3.

Judging from what you write, AT is doing its job. Look at it this way: you are writing a thread in the forum, because you noticed your heart rate is higher than usual, your Garmin tells you you should chill. And AT is slowing the progression. To me that seems like all three are in agreement.

Yes, it may be frustrating that you aren’t making fast progress now. But I wouldn’t blame AT on that.