tuesday rest
do you do backbends and situps?
Bump…
So who trains with a heart rate monitor? I just bought a nice cyclometer with speed, cadence and heart rate, but for now I think I’m gonna skip the HR/cadence and just use speed. I’m kinda ambivalent about HRMs but figured it’d be an okay investment anyway. Up to now I’ve just been riding entirely on perceived effort and it’s worked great for the most part, though it’s always a little annoying not knowing your speed in a paceline when it comes your turn to pull. Then there’s the guys on my team with their PowerTaps and HRM’s that, despite having all these scientific doo-dads and expensive bikes, don’t seem to progress as much as other people w/o that stuff and are always afraid of riding with too high of a heart rate.
I picked up a Polar HRM for cheap and use it occasionally. It’s cool for calibrating your perceived effort, your lactate threshold, and maintaining some specific training goals, like recovery rides where you want to be in a specific HR zone. I’m not competing and won’t be for some time to come. I’m also relatively new to this whole cycling thing, this being my first year putting in some real mileage (~1700 thus far). I’m still finding it relatively easy to get faster, so I really don’t need that much training discipline. If I were competing with the intention of winning specific events, I’d definitely have a training plan, with specific rides in specific HR zones.
Unfortunately, HRMs aren’t really that great for certain kinds of intervals, which are really useful for improving VO2Max. Power meters are more helpful in that realm, but unfortunately, they cost a hell of a lot more. If I were training seriously, I’d opt for a power meter. Though, like HRMs they are useless without a training plan. I was recently reading a blog by a competitive cyclist, maybe a cat 2 guy that had a power meter for over a year and hadn’t even done any calibration testing to determine his power output. He’d be using the meter for a year and just looking at the power graphs afterward. I imagine there are a lot of folks like that in the world not getting much benefit from their training tools.
I think I’m buying a Powertap.
Anecdote: I have a friend who was always way more of a roadie than me (no fenders, his kit matches, he shaves his legs, etc). Due to my natural skill I used to be able to beat him on climbs even though i don’t train in any structured or disciplined way. He got a powertap and started a serious training program, and now he can utterly crush me. I’m sure he enjoys it.
If you had the natural base to beat him on climbs before, I’m sure you could train to beat him again. Sounds like him beating you on climbs may have had more to do with him making a conscious effort to train on hills and you not, with the Powertap indirectly helping him out.
my new training program.
ride with guy down the street that is faster than me.
At a certain level, getting faster without strict training discipline represents a time commitment that most people don’t have. From what I understand, a power meter is really useful for getting the most out of limited training volume. As for folks without a specific plan, there are definitely people in the world that have the right kind of psychology to “play” or just challenge themselves and get results. Today, I went on a long ride with no specific training goals in mind. I’d some slower folks along, my legs were feeling good, and I was getting bored. I let them get well ahead of me and I’d sprint like hell for about 30 seconds and then coast for a while, I’d let them pass me again and repeat.
For what it’s worth, I’d love a power meter. I’m just not a “serious” enough to justify one, yet.
A power meter is useful but you can develop a very efficient training plan without one. The difference in improvement between just riding and having a structured plan is huge. The difference between a good plan using perceived exertion and a good plan using a power meter isn’t that huge. The difference between an hrm and a power meter is pretty minimal.
I race, but really hate training. Riding is fun, and I try to do group rides as often as possible to challenge myself, but I really just don’t care enough to structure my workouts. It makes riding less fun and more chore-like.
my name is also ben and I agree with this.
I used to use a HRM but I am too lazy to strap the chest thing on now. I just ride. And not enough for what I want to accomplish, but whatevs, I get by and get some pretty cool opportunities from time to time. The most structure I could ever gather out of it all is the hours I put in. 3.5-4 hours is a damn good day, 1.5 hour is recovery, 2~2.5 hour is normal day. Going down the street to the park to do laps and intervals is a lazy day. Doing rollers/trainer drills for a half hour is because I got home after dark.
also, 2 hours on mtb > 2 hours on road for general fitness IMO.
all that electronic numbers and power stuff is bullshit. your dad’s friend’s cat1 son on the regional professional developmental team with a powertap and an orbea wouldnt last 3 days in the 1926 Tour.
I was with you on the first sentence, but the second one is simply a fallacy. Sure, the guys in the '26 tour were riding heavier bikes and had to carry their own shit, but they also knew a lot less about training than a cat 1 of today. Training knowledge in general has made a lot of progress since then. Intervals, AFAIK, weren’t really well known until the '50’s for example.
Everytime someone quotes that dumbass, I’m reminded why I have lollerskates on ignore.
Jekyll and Hyde, man. He’s got good days and some seriously off days.
[quote=trackatino]Bump…
So who trains with a heart rate monitor? I just bought a nice cyclometer with speed, cadence and heart rate, but for now I think I’m gonna skip the HR/cadence and just use speed. I’m kinda ambivalent about HRMs but figured it’d be an okay investment anyway. Up to now I’ve just been riding entirely on perceived effort and it’s worked great for the most part, though it’s always a little annoying not knowing your speed in a paceline when it comes your turn to pull. Then there’s the guys on my team with their PowerTaps and HRM’s that, despite having all these scientific doo-dads and expensive bikes, don’t seem to progress as much as other people w/o that stuff and are always afraid of riding with too high of a heart rate.[/quote]
i use a HRM everyday. I gotta say, it helps me a lot. I focus on HR & cadence and I allow the speed to fluctuate throughout the ride. it’s extremely windy on the island where I train, so my speed, with the wind in my face is usually around 20mph, but with the wind at my back is around 27mph. so, if i try and keep my spins between 95-105 and my HR at 80%-85% of my max HR during training rides then, I’m able to get a more consistent race when variables like wind come into play.
edit: i would love a powertap but i can’t justify the expense (yet)