I apologize for the lapse in posting frequency, but career intensity, personal software projects, training, and my daughters lacrosse season have taken its toll my disposable free time. That said, I have been giving some thought to what I consider the Holy Grail of Training. No, its not a new drug, but rather understanding more about recovery. I am perplexed at my own ability to train hard, recover and improve in fitness. I am under whelmed with the current best practice of using your waking heart rate to determine your physical stress. I know it’s been around for years, but there seems to many factors that influence morning heart rate other than recent cycling intensity. The theory being that the body can only improve in fitness if it stressed to a certain point, then allowed to recover and rebuild. Pushing yourself during a time when the body needs to recover and rebuild is counter productive. Ok, that sounds romantic, and I guess I buy it. So how do you determine when your body needs to recover, resting heart rate seems to be the most objective. Personally, the subjective “How do I feel today?” while probably more accurate leaves something to be desired.
Most of what you read about training plans is some permutation on intense days followed by easy days, thus somehow building in programmed recovery. The problem with this is that other factors besides training affect recovery. Good coaches understand this and allow for flexibility in training. I wish I had a device that I could just stick my finger into and it would tell me how my body is doing. That probably requires some technology like the Tricorder from the old Star Trek series though.
I have religiously kept a record of most every ride I’ve made in the last three years. This among other things keeps how much time I spend in various HR zones, with 5 second accuracy. I have to some degree kept track of my morning HR, Blood Pressure (I used to suffer from Hypertension before I started cycling), and morning weight. What I have not kept track of and now understand better are the subjective stresses on my body such as how good was my sleep each night, how stressed was I because of travel, work, family, mowing the lawn. These things definitely contribute to morning HR and probably contribute to your body’s ability to recover.
So my new quest it to write some piece of software that will take in all the data I have collected, and guess what my morning hr should be. If my data is good and there is correlation, I should be able to “discover” the formula that predicts morning HR. So why would I want to be able to predict morning HR? First it seems like a challenging piece of software, and well that’s cool. Second if I can predict morning HR, then I can understand the sensitivity of HR to various stimuli. For example what is more stressful? 4 hours of z2 or 1 hour of a particular type of interval? How about 3 days of that? How does the number of hours of sleep affect recovery? All these things are there for the understanding. My guess is that I have no idea on the number of items that actually affect morning HR, and its going to be like trying to predict the weather.
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1 comment:
You are justified in being "underwhelmed", b/c you're relying on the popular mythology that heart rate (HR) is a reliable measure of performance. HR monitoring shouldn't be completely discredited, but there are too many other factors that affect HR to use it as a means to gauge one's performance or how hard one should train.
There is "no reliable way to estimate" max heart rate. It must follow that training in "heart rate zones" that are based on an estimate of max heart rate for which there is "no reliable way to estimate"... is a practice worthy of questioning.
Heart rate is --not-- a mechanism of performance. Why not restrict oneself to measuring things that are (eg training velocity, trainging pace).
Heart rate is something that takes care of itself. Why not restrict oneself to focusing on things that don't [ie. training velocity, pace per mile]. How much blood you move is dependent upon stroke volume. Heart rate is not a measure of stroke volume.
The mechanisms of performance....
-- how many.........muscle fibers can you recruit
-- how quickly......can you recruit them
-- how long...........can you maintain a high level of recruitment
Heart rate has nothing to do with these, it doesn't measure these. Heart rate doesn't matter, power output does. Focus on training velocity.
By Christopher Koch……..June 15, 2004
'Cycling Power'
"Power output dominates the training of top cyclists like Armstrong because it's a much more accurate gauge of performance than speed (at the mercy of the wind) or even heart rate (too fickle), say experts.
Power never lies because it is a direct measure of the force applied to the bike (torque) that is converted into a measure of power output (watts). By measuring how many watts he expends on a mountain climb, Armstrong can develop a training program that duplicates those race efforts down to the watt. For the past seven years, Armstrong has used a $2,600 device called the SRM Powermeter..."
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from……..“Measure Your Power:SRM Training System”
[http://www.kinetitech.com.au/products_SRM.htm]
European pros such as Jan Ullrich, Lance Armstrong, Francesco Casagrande, Romans Vainsteins, Davide Rebellin, Eric Zabel, Andrej Tchmil, Marco Pantani, Michele Bartoli and the list goes on; they have all used or are using SRMs .
The users have all discovered the benefits of training with power. Environmental factors such as weather, bike set-up, race situations, diet and cadences etc are all eliminated.
It’s been well established that there is a close relationship between a rider's power output and their success in racing.
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By Michael Specter
'The New Yorker', 15 July 2002
"...Armstrong won the Tour, for the third time in a row, by covering 3,462 kilometres at an average speed of more than forty kilometres an hour--the third-fastest time in the history of the event.
...Watts provide the most accurate measurement of the intensity of exercise; heart rates vary and so does speed. The amount of work needed to climb a hill remains the same no matter how fast you ride."
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by Gregg Germer
“Training Smarter: The PowerTap Pro" Wednesday, October 01, 2003 8:47:07 AM
[www.pezcyclingnews.com/?pg=fullstory&id=1665]
The "Lance Effect", it's changed how everyone looks at cycling.
One of the biggest influences of the Lance Effect has been the mainstreaming of power-based training.
The idea has been around for years, but only recently has it come to down from the pro peloton to the consumer level.
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reposted from the thread titled……”The Basics.........of runner physiology” [Posted: 13 October 2004 at 5:32pm”]
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"This high velocity training elicits high levels of force and brief contact time."
"Regular training at velocities above v-marathon [marathon velocity] seems to characterize top class marathoners."
V.L.Billat, et.al………………..Physical Training And Characteristics Of Top-Class Marathon Runners
Medicine & Science In Sports & Exercise....Volume 33 #12...2001....page 2089 - 2097
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“the purpose of this study was to compare the energetic and training factors that contribute to the marathon performance time of top-class ......versus high-level marathon runners."
"The high energy output seems to be the discriminating factor for top-class male marathon runners who trained at higher relative intensities."
V.L.Billat, et.al.....2001
Physical And Training Characteristics Of Top-Class Marathon Runners
Medicine & Science In Sports & Exercise.....Volume 33 #12.....2001.....page 2089 - 2097
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