A little background – I was doing a masters last year, as well as working full time so had no spare time for cycling. Previous to that I was fairly fit and cycled a lot. I started getting back into it over winter, cycling both on and off road, and got myself a Garmin 820 to replace an old 200 early this year. The up side of this is I now have lots of numbers to look at, including a reasonably accurate heart rate.

I’ve felt a lot of improvement since January, no question, but have seen some interesting things happening to the numbers more recently.

I’m now commuting in to work on the bike twice a week, its about 20 miles each way with 375 meters of climbing, a club (road) ride on a Saturday of around 50 to 60 miles with ~1500m of climbing, and a 2 or 3 hour MTB session on a Sunday, plus other bits here and there throughout the week.

Over the last month or so, my average heart rate (on the measurable ride, the commute) has been gradually dropping, but my average speed has been increasing. I now find the limit to be legs (I’m guessing lactic buildup), and really struggle to get anywhere near my Max heart rate (Not measured properly, just the max I saw on a really hard race).

Do I now have to think about threshold training if I want to carry on improving, and/or is there some good literature anywhere I can read up on to better understand what I’m seeing?

Hi
I don’t think I’m anywhere near as fit as you and don’t mean to teach you to suck eggs but I find that to get improvements the best thing I can do is work on my Lactose Threshold.
Read an article in an American bike mag a few years ago and it helped me a lot.
Basically whilst going up an incline get to just less than maximum cadence then back off slightly and maintain for as long as you can. Then repeat as often as you can.
The good thing for Me was that you can do it in normal rides and don’t have to have specific training sessions.
I used interval training in the gym to complement this.
Apologies if this is obvious.
Cheers
Steve

If you’re interested enough to read up about this, get one of Joe Friel’s books.

Internet forums are the worst place for specific advice.

For example, the post above. The phrase is Lactate Threshold, the session the poster discusses isn’t really a good workout for lactate threshold (it’s nothing to do with cadence), and it’s not really relevant to your question.

(No offence meant fatgit)

I’m currently following the British Cycling Improvers plan (to prepare for a 60 mile sportive).
Initially I was in two minds over how much improvement I would see, as I can ride 60 miles at a reasonable pace anyway, but I was very pleasantly surprised.
I’m only on week 6, but I can see a definite changes already.
The mid-week training sessions (that I do on the commute home) cover a variety of different types of zone training, and gradually increase in intensity up to the tapering weeks.

I’ve enjoyed the structured training aspect of the process too.

I am now more aware of things such as rest, fuelling and hydration, and finish rides not feeling anywhere as depleted as I used to.

Have a look at their plans which are free on the BC website, or to download on Training Peaks, to see if they could work for you.

+1 for the Joe Friel books.

+1 for Friel’s Training Bible.

One of two possibilities for your HR question.
The first is you’ve trained your endurance engine well and raw leg strength is now the limiter (quite rare, but have been here myself, been doing lots of high torque sessions to work on this).
The second is you’re seeing the first signs of having over done things a bit and your HR is suppressed by fatigue.

Only you can really figure out which of the above applies.

fifeandy, I did wonder that, not quite sure how I’d diagnose the over-doing part, other than maybe a week off (not sure I’d cope!). Would I still be seeing the really improved averages if is was an impending fatigue ‘issue’?

I’ll look into Friels books, thanks for the recommendations there.

Do you use Strava and a heart rate monitor that rarely fails on rides?

If you’re not a Preminum Strava user, install Stravistix (for Google Chrome) and see what the “Multisport Fitness Trend Beta” shows as regards possible overtraining.

My fitness figures are fubared, I’ve had too many HRM fails on rides in the last few weeks, it says I’m Fitness 89 and Fatigue 54.8 excluding a few big rides for me up in the South Downs cat4 hills.

My fitness training started in January, a lot of it has been Zone4 riding, I’m now seeing my heart rate average for rides drop (but also I recover far quicker after big efforts up hills; my resting heart rate has dropped to ~49bpm from 60+ when I started).

@wildc4rd, yes, its quite possible to maintain and even very slightly improve performances when entering the first stage of overtraining. Especially if you are motivated to try and improve the speed all the time – it can easily be a result of just trying harder.
It’s good practice to take one week in 4 with reduced volume and intensity.

The good news is there’s plenty of other signs to look out for. The book covers it.
Mild depression (general grumpyness and apathy towards things)
Hard to concentrate
Disturbed sleep patterns
Muscles aching for no reason
Endless sugar cravings

For me, the depressed HR always come first before signs of the others, but if the others show up i know its time to rest up right away, as thats when carrying on can dig you a hole.

Hopefully though you have the somewhat less glum diagnosis of weak legs which can be cured with hideous interval sessions and gym work 😈

I think you may have it fifeandy, legs felt rubbish 5 miles in to the commute this morning… Going to give it a rest over the weekend and see how it feels on Tuesday for a commute again.

Cheers all!