HR plateau?

Flipper- Can you give us some more information? How old are you? I am in a similar situation and have been thinking about your question myself. I started riding regularly during the summer of 2005 after 25 years off the bike. Now when I ride hard, I too see my heart rate climbing steadily and quickly through the 130's and mid 140's then creep much more slowly into the upper 150's. All of this time I am trying to bridge a gap or hang on as the pack crests a hill so my perceived effort at this point is really high. For me this is the point where the will and the body part ways but since the will is in the body it is still clamboring up the hill while he pack is gracefully sailing down the far side. Sigh......

In my case I am 50 years old. I am pretty sure that the max heart rate plateau that I am experiencing is age related. When we provide our heart rate monitors with the our maximum heart rates and we haven't determined these values by self testing or in a lab then we use a standard approximation which is 220 minus our Current Age. So "typical" 50 year olds can expect their maximum heart rate to be around 170. So I suspect that my heart rate increase slows as it gets into the 160 range because it is reaching my heart rate maximum.

Here are a couple of sites that might be useful if age might be a factor in your heart rate maximum plateau.

Time Course of Training Adaptations
http://home.hia.no/~stephens/timecors.htm

Aging and Cardiovascular Function
http://home.hia.no/~stephens/hrtage.htm

If your aging is a possible factor in your max heart rate plateau, then I will post a couple of further questions I have been wondering about.

Curlew

Thanks for the links curlew. I'm 39, and have been riding on the road for about 18 months. I usually spend between 15-20 hrs a month on my bike, riding at least 3 times a week so I think my body should be used to it by now 🙂
It's not really a max heart rate issue but closer to where I tend to think my AT is. After 40 minutes @ 162, I generally start to blow up so I've been using it as my AT point.
I've also never done a formal MHR test, but after trying a few different approaches (different MHR calculators) I came up with 184. On the road, I've hit 181 on a steep climb and so thought it may be close to the mark.
The hurdle for me is the perceived effort to go over 162. Once I do, my HR climbs steadily again up to about 176...which I don't push past very often.

Occasionally I've noticed that this happens at 157...come up to it nice and steadily, have to really push to get over it and then nice and steady from there on up.

I've asked a few of my riding mates but it doesn't seem to happen to them.

Same thing happens to me (almost 50 :eek: ) and corresponds fairly well to my lactate threshold (which I've had tested).

i notice it too, my threshold (the one i can maintain for 20 minutes or more) is about 190bpm, compared with a max of 205ish. once the number comes up to around 190, increases require discernably more effort.

2 possibilities I can think of...

- when you go harder than threshold, any increases in power are probably much more violently translated into perceived effort, so it may just "feel" like you have to go a lot harder.

- they say that increases in heart rate have a half life. so if i increase my power to a level that requires an increase in HR of 10bpm then in a certain unit of time it only increases 5bpm, then plays catch-up at a rate of 50% the difference for each further unit. there is possibly a level of effort at which the power you can put out can only be maintained for such a short period of time, that the heart rate never has the time to adjust significantly before you haveto quit and ease off.

flipper said:

..........
It's not really a max heart rate issue but closer to where I tend to think my AT is. ......

As soon as I saw your age I realized that the heart rate plateau that first came to my mind that is associated with one's max heart rate was not the plateau you were experiencing and wondering about which is a plateau at a lower heart rate associated with anaerobic threshold.

There is a good visualization of the anaerobic threshold plateau you are experiencing on the graph titled "Conconi Test Results" at

http://www.brianmac.demon.co.uk/coni.htm

The plateau you are wondering about, I think, is at 182 beats per minute on the graph. I think it is interesting that you detected this pattern without quantifying a gradually increasing effort, recording heart rates and graphing it out!!

Curlew

curlew said:

There is a good visualization of the anaerobic threshold plateau you are experiencing on the graph titled "Conconi Test Results" at

http://www.brianmac.demon.co.uk/coni.htm
...

Thanks for the link Curlew, that graph really is an excellent visualization of what I'm experiencing...couldn't have drawn it out better myself 🙂

Good to hear that some of you other guys have noticed it too.

curlew said:

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I think it is interesting that you detected this pattern without quantifying a gradually increasing effort, recording heart rates and graphing it out!!

I live in a very hilly area and spend a lot of my time climbing... I think it's just from doing it so much... you get used to what your body is doing and your PE becomes quite accurate. I can tell on a long hill, when I've hit 162 without looking at my HRM.