Beyond the Lactic Threshold

I've started to use a heart rate monitor whilst riding. At first I just monitored, reading the results and looking at the data when I got home, just out of interest like. My Garmin device allows you to display heart rate as you ride along and so I decided to switch this facility on. I'm not saying it's a mistake to do this but it certainly was a shock. Let me explain.

I've been reading about lactic threshold lately and naturally as a cyclist and a scientist, this particular aspect of riding intrigues me greatly. My lactic threshold remains unknown and may do so till such a time when I really need to know. I can however arbitrarily determine that it must be somewhere between 165bpm and 175bpm and the reason I know this is because on Sunday last, after suffering two punctures in a row, my fellow club mates paced me back to the group and with some speed. A distance of some 16 miles was covered in way less than an hour and if I said that included the long climb up Old Winchester Hill, which is 3.5Km long with an average gradient of 4%, then you can appreciate that we were motoring; the speedo did indicate, when I had time enough to look at it, 28mph on the flat. After this effort I was a wee bit knackered and looking at the heart rate for that section of the ride I was in Zone 3 for all of that time. I had, I concluded, been riding above the lactic threshold for too long. The rest of the ride was uncomfortable to say the least. 31mph gusting headwinds did not help and I kind of limped home. What's that about pacing yourself I hear you shout?

So how has monitoring my heart rate helped me. Well, my intention was to ride in mostly zone 2 (65-75% max HR) which for me is between 130 and 152bpm. This is the rate at which I do an hour on the turbo trainer in order to build endurance; it is generally considered and I would concur that this heart rate should be maintainable

for long periods of time. Problem was that My HR was in Zone 3 for 53% of the ride on Sunday and this isn't, wasn't, sustainable. In Surrey and Hampshire, most rides involve a fair bit of undulation if not outright sustained upward effort and so Zones 3 & 4 are often encroached for short periods of time and I consider this to be a natural sort of interval training. The big question for myself is how can I be a bit more efficient with HR; perhaps the answer comes from maintaining cadence. Of course the weather on Sunday was awful, the headwind was brutal and I couldn't feel my hands or legs at all by the 80Km mark, so there are a few factors to consider as to the poor performance in the last quarter of the ride but I do wholly believe I pushed too hard for too long.

http://bikeroutetoaster.com/Course.aspx?course=516513

bad days in the saddle aside however my obsession with improving hill climbing continues.

So, like all good scientists I need a hypothesis to work to in order to drive an improvement. I think the major improvement will come on hill climbing. Hypothesis: maintaining cadence, not over or under pedalling will improve 1) endurance and 2) Hill climbing ability. I will be taking Heart rate into consideration but only in a monitoring fashion. For Hill climbing I would expect to be at 85% of max HR and even above.

This article that I found on the Internet seems to point to the direction I should be taking: http://tunedintocycling.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/hill-climbing-101-pedaling-and-shifting/ . Actually after breezing through the 101, I recommend going to the 102, where technique is discussed in a more detailed and useful way.

As the clocks move froward into British summer time; I know it doesn't feel like summer, but for those of us with day Jobs the extended evenings mean more opportunities to get out and ride. I for one will be overjoyed to see the return of the after-work evening ride.