# Pro Cyclist Heart Rate



## stevepeter833 (Dec 22, 2012)

Hi guys,

I just looked at Michal Kwiatkowski's Strava for the UCI World Championship which he won.

Bike Ride Profile | 253 kilometers near Ponferrada | Times and Records | Strava

What's amazing to me is the fact that that he mostly rode on Zone 2-3 heart rate which meant that he didn't push at all. Is that true?

His heart rate says 119-157 for Zone 2 and 157-176 for Zone 3. While for me (based on Strava auto-adjust when I put in my age), my Zone 2 is 116-148 then zone 3 is 148-161.

My question is, is heart rate - just like power - something that you can increase? Or is this pro heart rate on Strava skewed for competition purpose?


Cheers,
Steve


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## Cableguy (Jun 6, 2010)

If his heart rate for the entire 253km was usually in Zone 2-3 that sounds about right. They're not riding "hard" for the entire 253km. I didn't watch the race but I'm guessing a Cat 5 could have hung with the pack most of the race... it comes down to key moments particularly towards the end the pace usually ramps up extremely high.


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## stevesbike (Jun 3, 2002)

The race was for 6.5 hours. The heart rate profile in terms of zones is typical of endurance racing. No one can race that long at threshold HR (look at how tired racers are after an hour long time trial). By the end of the race, they are also fatigued but that's where he worked the hardest (just eyeballing his HR as a rough guess). It's completely different from an hour long crit.

Having a higher heart rate doesn't mean anything in itself - there's lots of individual variability in this. Pros train large volumes to be able to output high power at endurance levels for a long time. 



stevepeter833 said:


> Hi guys,
> 
> I just looked at Michal Kwiatkowski's Strava for the UCI World Championship which he won.
> 
> ...


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## woodys737 (Dec 31, 2005)

Cableguy said:


> If his heart rate for the entire 253km was usually in Zone 2-3 that sounds about right. They're not riding "hard" for the entire 253km. I didn't watch the race but* I'm guessing a Cat 5 could have hung with the pack most of the race...* it comes down to key moments particularly towards the end the pace usually ramps up extremely high.


No. This comes up from time to time with guys that don't really race much but think they can do way more than they can. When the group ride with a bunch of hacks picks it up they are not there. Just a weird sense of thinking they are much more fit than they are. What I think it really comes down to is they just have zero perspective on how good these guys are let alone the local cat1 and maybe cat2 guys.

Also, to the op, one guys threshold might be 20bpm lower than yours but, he may be generating 100W more at that HR than you. Point is someones zone 2 or whatever has no relevance to your zone 2. With that said, go out and ride zone 2 for 4 hours. It's brutal.


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## adam_mac84 (Sep 22, 2010)

His power to weight is just that good. Avg power for the entire race (243w) = 3.54 w/kg (accd to wikipedia 68kg, guessing race weight is less). That would be a good cat3 1 hour (FT) power.... ONE HOUR

On the last climb does 3 minutes at 477 watts, 7 w/kg 

There is also a 1 minute section at 552w (8.12 w/kg) in THE LAST CLIMB OF A 6 HOUR RACE

2nd to last climb 5 w/kg at avg 164 HR for 7 minutes, which is a good cat 2, 5 minute power. Yea, they are just that strong


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## adam_mac84 (Sep 22, 2010)

There are also pretty consistent (each lap) sections at `5.0 w/kg for 5 minutes at a time. Speaks to the fitness/repeatability of his efforts as well.


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## tlg (May 11, 2011)

stevepeter833 said:


> What's amazing to me is the fact that that he mostly rode on Zone 2-3 heart rate which meant that he didn't push at all. Is that true?
> 
> His heart rate says 119-157 for Zone 2 and 157-176 for Zone 3. While for me (based on Strava auto-adjust when I put in my age), my Zone 2 is 116-148 then zone 3 is 148-161.


I wouldn't put a lot of weight into it. One thing you don't know is if his Strava account is set up properly for his HR zones. Perhaps he's just using the default zones and didn't customize them based on his HR. 
I would imagine that may be the case as he might not want competitors to know how strong (or not) he may be riding. Maybe he falsely elevated his max HR to appear stronger than his is.


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## DMH2979 (May 24, 2011)

I totally agree with woodys737, after you race for a while, and have some sense of what power numbers "mean", these guys are "that good." What blows me away, as has been pointed out, is the numbers they can produce after accumulating 4000+ kj's worth of fatigue (or 6 hrs of racing, however you want to look at it). Sure they may look like they are JRA, but throw any cat 5 (or even an experienced cat 2 or 1) in the mix, and just the fight for position would leave them shooting out the back in about 1k. 

It's really the nuances and subtle accelerations that you don't see that make the pro peloton so crazy. You may see "210 avg watts" for a section, and yeah, a cat5 could probably go out and ride that for a couple of hours, but what you don't see is that could encompass 5,10,15s accelerations up to 500+ and then coast for a bit then a short hard acceleration to maintain position. 

My only experience is doing the p12 races at superweek back in the early 2000s. They would usually bring over 4 or 5 "b" euro teams and the aggression and fight for position and mental energy was pretty taxing. If you gave an inch, some guy from Belgium would take it in a second (or even try to take it even if you don't give an inch  all while yelling "amateur." 

Whoops, didn't mean to highjack the thread but like woody, I am always amazed when people make the "cat5 could hang" statement . . .


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## Cableguy (Jun 6, 2010)

woodys737 said:


> No. This comes up from time to time with guys that don't really race much but think they can do way more than they can. When the group ride with a bunch of hacks picks it up they are not there. Just a weird sense of thinking they are much more fit than they are. What I think it really comes down to is they just have zero perspective on how good these guys are let alone the local cat1 and maybe cat2 guys.


I didn't mean to imply a cat 5 would hang on for most of the race, that is *highly* unlikely, but that a cat 5 could probably handle the average power level of the race, at least for a good while. Not a particularly meaningful statement but was trying to emphasize why his heart rate was only zone 2-3. 

For a race of that duration the average power of the riders was probably not much greater than 200w. I know there are some TdF stages (which are of course generally easier than one day races) where riders average <150w. Anyways, I was trying to point out in a cute way that they're not going "hard" for most the race.


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## jajichan (Jul 9, 2014)

Cableguy said:


> If his heart rate for the entire 253km was usually in Zone 2-3 that sounds about right. They're not riding "hard" for the entire 253km.* I didn't watch the race but I'm guessing a Cat 5 could have hung with the pack most of the race.*.. it comes down to key moments particularly towards the end the pace usually ramps up extremely high.


Absolutely, emphatically no. 

Not even an hour. Probably not even 15 mins.


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## jajichan (Jul 9, 2014)

HR just doesn't mean anything relative to anyone else. 

There are just too many variables and it's way too individual. 

Besides, your age has absolutely nothing to do with actually calculating your hr and cannot in any way be depended upon.


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## jajichan (Jul 9, 2014)

adam_mac84 said:


> His power to weight is just that good. Avg power for the entire race (243w) = 3.54 w/kg (accd to wikipedia 68kg, guessing race weight is less). That would be a good cat3 1 hour (FT) power.... ONE HOUR
> 
> On the last climb does 3 minutes at 477 watts, 7 w/kg
> 
> ...


Strava has his weighted power at 298, which, in my experience is usually quite a bit lower than CP's Normalized Power. 6.5 hours at 300+ NP. Oh my god. 

Utterly infriggin' sane.


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## Cableguy (Jun 6, 2010)

jajichan said:


> Absolutely, emphatically no.
> 
> Not even an hour. Probably not even 15 mins.


I phrased that pretty poorly. I meant for most of the race the riders were sitting in and going at a power level a cat 5 could have managed.


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## jajichan (Jul 9, 2014)

Cableguy said:


> I phrased that pretty poorly. I meant for most of the race the riders were sitting in and going at a power level a cat 5 could have managed.


I see what you were trying to say but it has zero basis in reality because they were not just simply sitting in at a power level a cat 5 could have managed. 

Because that's not how that race unfolded. It's not how any race on a course like that unfolds.

Probably over 5.2 + w/kg for 10+ mins in the first 15 mins of the race. 

I take back my prior post. Cat 5s wouldn't have made it much further than the neutral zone.


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## MaximumTrainer (Oct 3, 2014)

His HR may seem low compare to you, but he has more experience and sometime what is a low HR to you may be high for someone else.. not really good to compare HR if you don't know his LTHR, then you can know his zone


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## Cableguy (Jun 6, 2010)

The OP seemed to know the cyclist's zones and was making comparisons relative to that


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## MaximumTrainer (Oct 3, 2014)

Hmm I need to learn how to read, thanks for pointing that out @Cableguy.

Don't have long ride experience but for 253km, if you go too much in Zone3+, will you be able to substain it and provide the burst needed to follow the others (400Watts+) from time to time?


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## aclinjury (Sep 12, 2011)

stevepeter833 said:


> ....
> ....
> My question is, is heart rate - just like power - something that you can increase? Or is this pro heart rate on Strava skewed for competition purpose?


Heartrate is something that can't be trained. However, cardiac output (heartrate x stroke volume) can increase with training. And since heartrate is not very trainable, it is the stroke volume that increase with training. Now given the same cardiac output, it is much more desirable to have a lower heartrate and higher stroke volume than it is to have a higher heartrate and lower stroke volume.

Eddy Merckx's max heartrate during his prime didn't go above 140 much. He actually had a heart condition. So this means that his stroke volume must be very large


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## jajichan (Jul 9, 2014)

MaximumTrainer said:


> Hmm I need to learn how to read, thanks for pointing that out @Cableguy.
> 
> Don't have long ride experience but for 253km, if you go too much in Zone3+, will you be able to substain it and provide the burst needed to follow the others (400Watts+) from time to time?


In a long race you just hang out and conserve as much energy as possible until the real race actually starts. But that still means putting out big efforts to stay with the group. You just manage those efforts and save them for when they're totally necessary. 

But 400 watts is nothing. In a race you'll hit that every time you get out of the saddle to moderately accelerate.


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## serious (May 2, 2006)

jajichan said:


> Strava has his weighted power at 298, which, in my experience is usually quite a bit lower than CP's Normalized Power. 6.5 hours at 300+ NP. Oh my god.
> 
> Utterly infriggin' sane.


His average power was around 240w. Normalized was around 310w. Still amazing.


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