Friel recommends endurance rides during base season based on HR. I think this makes sense, perhaps combined with RPE.
I think HR is better if you haven’t tested your FTP in a while, also you will be able to see your progress in watts given a HR level.
I rarely, rarely see 175, I hit 188 in a ramp test about 18 months ago after a few months off from training. I’ve not gotten anywhere close since. My heart would probably explode if I spent 1.5 hours at 175😂.
I sort of agree with this. The thing is, if you have HR data recording, once you have a robust sample of those rides you’ll notice the output HR “converges” to a narrow band, indicative of that RPE 5 type of effort.
I believe this is not true, if we are talking about the 3 zone system.
Agree but depends on the time in season. In the winter en early season (december, january) i use for endurance heartrate and RPE. When my condition is better, and my heartrate decrease and more stable i pace on power and keep an eye on heartrate.
Sensible, but did your HR decrease…Or Did your power, given a HR level increase ?
I could be wrong, but once you have properly established your Max HR and LTHR…those are pretty much set, then power is just the variable load, which hopefully we keep increasing.
When my condition is growing, my heartrate is more stable during a ride.
For example. In december i ride 160w with hr 145. In january/february it is 180w with hr 145.
I think you are right, my power is increasing vs hr.
It doesn’t matter what system we’re talking about.
The relationship between HR and power is neither constant nor perfectly linear. HR is also a cardiovascular variable, while power mostly reflects what your muscles can do. Finally, any division of either into zones is really arbitrary.
Put it all together, and discrepancies will occur regardless of how you attempt to structure things.
agree, but i think it is possible to see changes in aerobic fitness over years when you look at avg efficiency factor per month or year.
Yes, aggregating data is often helpful when attempting to separate signal from noise.
Yes I agree, trend analysis is very helpful in this situation. Thanks for sharing that chart!
Yes you cant see any changes over 1 ride or a little period… for example, December/January compare with July gives you wrong information. Also a month in the mountains give also a higher Efficiency factor for that month because the avg power and normalized power is higher as normal on flat terrain.
You’re welcome! I make this with Golden Cheetah.
Always about context!
This we agree. But your initial statement was regarding an “A priori” reason for expect some correlation.
I’m simply pointing out that the the 3 zone system based on lactate thresholds DOES HAVE such an A priori reason. Weather that framework is appropriate or accurate is a different conversation.
Again, there is no a priori reason to expect agreement. That would only be true for two variables that exhibit minimal variability and are driven by the same factors.
