Riding Hard Year Around and How to Avoid Overtraining

A light bike doesn't replace good fitness.

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ericoschmitt
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by ericoschmitt

I've heard interesting things about HRV regarding stress load.

I'm in a similar place now, after getting a new bike and riding 100+km daily for some three weeks, topped that with a 60min FTP test - and now I'm sick. Cold that developed into flu. I don't ride with any numbers/computer, only tested on a trainer to compare later. Well, it's winter here in Brazil and half the orchestra I play got sick in the past days, so it could possibly not be the riding.

So now I'm considering getting a polar HRM to trace HRV and whatever else that could be useful. Let's search!

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dim
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by dim

ericoschmitt wrote:
Tue Jun 19, 2018 5:25 am
I've heard interesting things about HRV regarding stress load.

I'm in a similar place now, after getting a new bike and riding 100+km daily for some three weeks, topped that with a 60min FTP test - and now I'm sick. Cold that developed into flu. I don't ride with any numbers/computer, only tested on a trainer to compare later. Well, it's winter here in Brazil and half the orchestra I play got sick in the past days, so it could possibly not be the riding.

So now I'm considering getting a polar HRM to trace HRV and whatever else that could be useful. Let's search!

Last year, I rode my first sportive (it was only 50km but the first half was in very strong headwind)

I always ride solo, so I decided to go as fast as I can in the beginning so as to avoid being caught up in a bunch. I came 1st (I know that a sportive is not a race), but I wanted to give it my best.

I was physically sick for 2 weeks after that, and had very little energy. Check my heart rate (Zone 4 for 88% of the ride):

https://www.strava.com/activities/1281665044

It's not good to ride this way IMHO
Trek Emonda SL6
Miyata One Thousand

KWalker
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by KWalker

The best thing you can do is build a "test" into the start of some of your rides. Some kind of submaximal effort (but hard) where you look at how long it takes your HR to rise and return to normal. I used to use the same 5min hill where I'd do an effort at around FTP. Usually by the end of 5min HR was up to a consistent level, but if it failed to get up, or failed to come down as quickly it's a good sign of parasympathetic or sympathetic issues.

I tried HRV4Training for a while and it was pretty accurate, but sometimes failed to predict cumulative fatigue that well. I had an early version of the Whoop and found it to be pretty equal and got annoyed at wearing it all the time since I don't care for wearables.
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Nefarious86
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by Nefarious86

http://www.velonews.com/2018/03/podcast ... end_458403

This has plenty of good info.

Faster after 50 has some good info too.



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onemanpeloton
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by onemanpeloton

dim wrote:
Tue Jun 19, 2018 9:02 am
ericoschmitt wrote:
Tue Jun 19, 2018 5:25 am
I've heard interesting things about HRV regarding stress load.

I'm in a similar place now, after getting a new bike and riding 100+km daily for some three weeks, topped that with a 60min FTP test - and now I'm sick. Cold that developed into flu. I don't ride with any numbers/computer, only tested on a trainer to compare later. Well, it's winter here in Brazil and half the orchestra I play got sick in the past days, so it could possibly not be the riding.

So now I'm considering getting a polar HRM to trace HRV and whatever else that could be useful. Let's search!

Last year, I rode my first sportive (it was only 50km but the first half was in very strong headwind)

I always ride solo, so I decided to go as fast as I can in the beginning so as to avoid being caught up in a bunch. I came 1st (I know that a sportive is not a race), but I wanted to give it my best.

I was physically sick for 2 weeks after that, and had very little energy. Check my heart rate (Zone 4 for 88% of the ride):

https://www.strava.com/activities/1281665044

It's not good to ride this way IMHO
It's not possible to ride that amount of time in zone 4. If you did, your zones are wrong
2020 Trek Boone
2017 Merida Reacto
2017 Trek Superfly AL

dim
Posts: 596
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Location: Cambridge UK

by dim

onemanpeloton wrote:
Wed Jun 20, 2018 12:52 pm
dim wrote:
Tue Jun 19, 2018 9:02 am
ericoschmitt wrote:
Tue Jun 19, 2018 5:25 am
I've heard interesting things about HRV regarding stress load.

I'm in a similar place now, after getting a new bike and riding 100+km daily for some three weeks, topped that with a 60min FTP test - and now I'm sick. Cold that developed into flu. I don't ride with any numbers/computer, only tested on a trainer to compare later. Well, it's winter here in Brazil and half the orchestra I play got sick in the past days, so it could possibly not be the riding.

So now I'm considering getting a polar HRM to trace HRV and whatever else that could be useful. Let's search!

Last year, I rode my first sportive (it was only 50km but the first half was in very strong headwind)

I always ride solo, so I decided to go as fast as I can in the beginning so as to avoid being caught up in a bunch. I came 1st (I know that a sportive is not a race), but I wanted to give it my best.

I was physically sick for 2 weeks after that, and had very little energy. Check my heart rate (Zone 4 for 88% of the ride):

https://www.strava.com/activities/1281665044

It's not good to ride this way IMHO
It's not possible to ride that amount of time in zone 4. If you did, your zones are wrong
my max heartrate is 178 according to my garmin edge 1000 so that is correct .... the info on the ride that is displayed on Strava is correct
Trek Emonda SL6
Miyata One Thousand

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onemanpeloton
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by onemanpeloton

ok, I'm just saying that threshold should only be sustainable for 60 mins
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2017 Merida Reacto
2017 Trek Superfly AL

RyanH
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by RyanH

KWalker wrote:
Wed Jun 20, 2018 4:22 am
The best thing you can do is build a "test" into the start of some of your rides. Some kind of submaximal effort (but hard) where you look at how long it takes your HR to rise and return to normal. I used to use the same 5min hill where I'd do an effort at around FTP. Usually by the end of 5min HR was up to a consistent level, but if it failed to get up, or failed to come down as quickly it's a good sign of parasympathetic or sympathetic issues.

I tried HRV4Training for a while and it was pretty accurate, but sometimes failed to predict cumulative fatigue that well. I had an early version of the Whoop and found it to be pretty equal and got annoyed at wearing it all the time since I don't care for wearables.
Ah, that's useful and makes sense. I'll try that and see how it goes before I splurge on an all day device, which I agree, would probably be annoying to wear continuously. Thanks Karsten.
dim wrote:
Wed Jun 20, 2018 3:26 pm
my max heartrate is 178 according to my garmin edge 1000 so that is correct .... the info on the ride that is displayed on Strava is correct
Well, not exactly since your max HR during that ride was 179. Max HR is a guess by your Garmin. If you hit 179 during that ride, you most likely have some headroom for true max HR. In my experience, once you touch max HR (for me, in the low 190s), I've gone nuclear at that point and my ability to put out power and keep HR up greatly diminishes.

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kytyree
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by kytyree

My watch will track that type of thing, but I don't like wearing it at night and once I'm in the house for good each day I prefer to take it off.

I should at minimum put it on first thing in the morning before I get out of bed though and get a better reading of my resting heartrate but usually I don't grab it till I'm about to leave.

RyanH
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by RyanH

This was a pretty in depth analysis of the Apple Watch implementation of HRV and I think some of it could be applied to other devices. I think one of the challenges with all day wearables is that they calculated HRV throughout the day rather than a fixed, consistent time (morning, right after you wake) so it's possible they're just added noise or providing inaccurate data:

https://medium.com/@marco_alt/on-heart- ... f50e8e7bc0

KWalker
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by KWalker

RyanH wrote:
Wed Jun 20, 2018 5:16 pm
KWalker wrote:
Wed Jun 20, 2018 4:22 am
The best thing you can do is build a "test" into the start of some of your rides. Some kind of submaximal effort (but hard) where you look at how long it takes your HR to rise and return to normal. I used to use the same 5min hill where I'd do an effort at around FTP. Usually by the end of 5min HR was up to a consistent level, but if it failed to get up, or failed to come down as quickly it's a good sign of parasympathetic or sympathetic issues.

I tried HRV4Training for a while and it was pretty accurate, but sometimes failed to predict cumulative fatigue that well. I had an early version of the Whoop and found it to be pretty equal and got annoyed at wearing it all the time since I don't care for wearables.
Ah, that's useful and makes sense. I'll try that and see how it goes before I splurge on an all day device, which I agree, would probably be annoying to wear continuously. Thanks Karsten.
dim wrote:
Wed Jun 20, 2018 3:26 pm
my max heartrate is 178 according to my garmin edge 1000 so that is correct .... the info on the ride that is displayed on Strava is correct
Well, not exactly since your max HR during that ride was 179. Max HR is a guess by your Garmin. If you hit 179 during that ride, you most likely have some headroom for true max HR. In my experience, once you touch max HR (for me, in the low 190s), I've gone nuclear at that point and my ability to put out power and keep HR up greatly diminishes.
No problem! For me HRV would fail to catch a good or bad ride about 1/10 times, which was a bit too high of frequency for me. I think Garmin has a similar training readiness metric, but IIRC it has some sort of limitations, however, I found it to be fairly representative for me since I would ride the same ride start nearly every ride (or one of 3 options).
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kytyree
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by kytyree

That's why I want to do better about putting it on my garmin before I get out of bed. Take a minute or two reading and see what my heart rate looks like then.

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