This happens to me all the time, but only once I start to exceed my average workout length. When I was doing mostly hour-long workouts with a 75-90 minute one thrown in and a longer ride on the weekend, sure enough after ~75 min in Z2 I would start to see HR drift up. Now most of my rides are 2-2.5 hrs, and on longer weekend rides I’ll start to see that HR drift up after 2.5-3 hrs in Z2.
I try not to worry about it and just go by watts; once you’re outside your regular comfort zone just trust the training and advice and it will work out.
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It would be nice to see some files for comparison.
What sort of terrain are you riding. If it’s lumpy, are you going a little too hard on the climbs, jacking your heart rate up?
Yes that is very much what I am experiencing, I am thinking along the lines ‘this is really easy I am barely pedalling and barely in zone 2 power so I should be about 125-130bpm’ but when I look down its more like 140-145bpm and struggling to keep it that low. It does get slightly better in the second hour of a ride but doesnt really matter how early into the ride it is
Here are a couple rides for comparison, including the most recent one that motivated me to start this thread. Although the terrain where I live is slighty up and down, I can pretty much always stay in zone 2 or less and most of this long rides have basically no time in sweet-spot or above. The outside ride was after a couple days rest and my heart rate was up from the start and barely settled and I ended up averaging upper zone 1 power. I averaged 136bpm and 154w for the 1st hour and 138bpm and 157W for the 3rd hour, so its not decoupling at all.
@yajvans Here are the screenshots for the rides too. Very little time spent above zone 2 but if you look at the ratio between power and heart rate outdoors versus indoors there is a very big difference.
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I think that the difference is the variability in your power when cycling outdoors. This drags down the average, but without lowering your HR because the “rests” are so brief.
A bit curious case imho, but maybe it is due to power variability and postural muscle use while riding outside.
Another possibility is the size of the so called base and availability of power at the low end. Not commenting on whether this is desirable or not but if one wishes to improve low end power then one rather straightforward option is to spend time in that range and force the slow twitch fibers to work.
What happens if you ride at 195 outside?
to be honest I don’t know. I am going to try riding at that sort of range for my next long ride and hide my heart rate, to find out how I feel and respond
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My bet is that his HR will be higher and he will find it significantly harder.
This… coupled with actually riding your bike, so one has to do work just to navigate the roads instead of staying completely stationary and only moving your legs.
I’m usually about 5-10 bpm different for my endurance rides at the same power, but he’s looking like 30 watts different.
another point of consideration I’ve noticed… On variable terrain, I find it really hard to get a decently high average power relative to effort level. Even on my endurance rides it’s taken a lot of practice, but the OP had very low VI on the outdoor ride, so not like it was that variable.
This graph in a presentation by Coggan from 20 years ago seems to describe the OP’s situation. He credited the difference between indoors and outdoors as being partially due to distribution of power output.
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We have had very little hot weather where I live, so most of the rides are done 15-20’C, which feel a lot cooler than the temperature for my turbo rides. I generally sweat very little on these rides, take 2 x 750ml drinks and have to stop for a nature break at some point, which makes me think that I’m not really suffering with dehydration.
The power meter is a garmin vector 2S single sided pedal system, which I also use for my turbo rides.
When you say you use for your turbo rides, are you removing the pedal and putting it on a different bike?
