by Bvb45 on Fri Sep 09, 2011 8:16 am
For endurence sports, training with a lower heart rate can be beneficial, in that you train to burn fat better and more efficiently so than when you run out of Carbs and mainly switch to fat burn, you'll have a big advantages over those who didn't train for it.
I have a quote somewhere from Mark Allen, where he said he deliberately ran 8 miles in a period with the dedicated goal of going as fast as he could, under the constriction that he (for him as HR zones is personal) could not surpass 155bpm at all. He was amazed in the start of having to run 8:15/mile at some points and then later by repeating this he finally got it down to 5:50/mile, which saved his ass multiple times during IM length competitions, according to himself.
For biking Friels advice could also be translated into: When using a Watt meter for non-drafting(TT) events like long TTs and Tri, train for consistent, constant Watt-age and not spikes and rests, don't cook yourself before the run. If there is no run, ie a long TT only, then still make sure you can keep your pace to the finish line though this will almost always be at superhigh BPMs as its so intense, yet so short a sprint(even 60km).