Personal Training Heart Rates

After reading PezCycling's Toolbox: Heart Rate Training Intensities, I wanted to check out how my own numbers matched up with Dr. Cheung's calculations. First off, my maximal heart rate is 195 bpm and my resting rate is 60. Accordingly, my training heart rate is (0.7) * 195 = 137 bpm. If I were riding at this heart rate, I wouldn't even be breathing hard, just normally through my nose, and able to keep a normal conversational pace.

Cheung then goes on to describe the heart rate reserve concept, which is the maximal heart rate minus the resting heart rate. My HRR is 135, and using his example of the 70% training zone, my target rate would be resting rate plus 70% of HRR, or 60 + (0.7) * 135 = 155 bpm. This is getting closer to my experience. At 155 bpm, I would be breathing deeper, starting to sweat from exertion, more like a warm-up rate.

As for the steady state heart rate, this is what I call my cruising rate, and that's at about 175, so a 70% effort there would be 123. That just doesn't work for me at all, since I do 120 just sitting on the bike coasting around a parking lot. As Cheung cautions at the end of his piece, "Of course, it is not automatic that a 70% is meant to represent the same training intensity (e.g. endurance) for each method!”

I look forward to his future articles, especially the ones about Heart Rate Reserve, since this idea is based on two variables of current fitness, allowing for more accurate tuning of  personal HR intensity zones.