Been using the Garmin for a few rides now, getting used to it (apart from stopping it when reading a text earlier).
But the main difference in my riding is the ability to see my current HR info. I’ve not had that data ‘live’ for many many years outdoors. I noticed today that 155bpm is a LOT harder outdoors than it is indoors on Zwift. Does anyone else notice this ? I tried climbing one of the local hills and maintaining 145-152 which was where i was climbing the Alp when indoors recently, that wasn’t too bad, but then the differences in changes of HR seemed MASSIVE outdoors compared to indoor training.
I hit a small kicker and put in a 2nd best ever, HR hit 174bpm and that was as high as it was going ! I can hit 183 on Zwift and 174 is my ‘race’ HR which i can hold mostly consistently for 35-45 min.

Just wondering if others notice the same things ? It has made me seriously think about the upcoming Gorrick on the 6th Jan as i’m not convinced i’m as ready as i ought to be …

Wrist or chest strap monitor?
If wrist they can be a bit flaky due to losing contact with skin due to the arm flexing/moving around. You need to have it pretty tight.
It will also be easier to keep it constant inside since wont have the same variations (road surface/random gusts of wind/sudden changes in gradient and so on)

Indoor HR can be higher for a given power due to heat stress. Your heart is working harder to pump more blood for cooling, as you’re likely to be hotter for indoor training.

To put it another way – you produce lower power indoors compared to outdoors, for the same heart rate. So the power you are putting out at 155BPM outdoors would be more than indoors at 155BPM, hence it’s harder.

I was busy typing the same thing as Beej.

Don’t let that put you off the Gorrick – its only the people fighting for places that are worrying about being “ready”. I’m considerably over race weight, will be tired on the 26th (again) from 4 weeks of hard work and will sit in the mid-bottom third.

Sometimes its just worth having a go – there’s no better training for racing than racing after all. Plus, its a good day out with like minded people. I have a friend who’s never raced, been MTB’ing for six months and turning up on a Decathlon RockRider…

Diss, chest strap.

Apparently this isn’t unusual. British cycling say some people will need to set ftp or fthr separately indoors and outdoors if they train in both environments.

https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/knowledge/training-plans/supporting-documents/article/izn20150219-Intermediate-Indoor-vs-Outdoor-Threshold-Testing-0

Don’t let that put you off the Gorrick

Don’t worry Fella, I’ll still be having a try.

To put it another way – you produce lower power indoors compared to outdoors, for the same heart rate. So the power you are putting out at 155BPM outdoors would be more than indoors at 155BPM, hence it’s harder.

This is getting interesting now. Last night I equalled my all time PB VO2max for 6,8 and 10 min intervals indoors. I was suffering before Christmas but of course the break has helped and this means I’ve bounced back stronger demonstrating that the six weeks prior training has worked.

I’m intrigued to what power I can hold outdoors at HR Vo2Max. Because I don’t have power on my MTB, by using HR on it I should be experiencing Watts above where I am indoors during climbing – when rested – if the theory holds which of course is all good news. Using the evidence above, I should be climbing stronger for the same HR compared to last year (I think).

I can see now the advice I was given is to climb on Marathon races at the low end of V02Max, whilst in XC at the high end. I’m starting to understand the energy systems and why I’m doing this – this is what I like about training science!