Heart Rate Zone Definitions

The main purpose of this post is to make explicit something that has been implicit in some of my recent posts, that the definition of heart rate training zones I have been using has changed recently. What are heart rate zones? Very briefly, the faster I ride, the higher my heart rate, making heart rate a measure of the Intensity of my rides. Coaches want their athletes to train at a range of different Intensities, with a specific amount of time spent at each Intensity. Traditionally, the continuous range of Intensities is divided up into zones, for example, 130 to 140 heart beats per minute (bpm) equals Zone 2, 140 to 150 equals Zone 3, etc. Different coaches have different zone definitions. Furthermore, zone definitions are athlete specific as well. Coaches define heart rate zones as percentages of the athletes maximum heart rate or anaerobic threshold heart rate, for example. I am estimating my maximum heart rate as 180 bpm and my anaerobic threshold heart rate as 160 bpm and all the heart rate numbers in this post are relative to those estimates. Thus, nobody but me should use the heart rate bpm values in this post unless their maximum and anaerobic threshold heart rates are the same as mine.

When I first got my Garmin Heart Rate monitor back in 2012, I started using a set of zones which were fairly similar to those recommended by Coach Joe Friel, my favorite coach of the time and, mostly due to inertia, continued to use those zones until fairly recently. Those are the zones named Zombie Zones in the chart at the top of this post. Way back in January of 2019 I reviewed the eBook by Coach John Hughes, “Intensity Training for Cyclists” and noted that the training zones in this book were different from what I had been using. For a variety of reasons, some of which I will discuss below, I did not act on that observation immediately but I did think about it and now, four years later, those are the zones I am using. In the chart at the top of this post, these zones are named Hughes Zones.

The context in which I first looked at the Hughes zones was the preparation of my post, Deconstructing 100K per month.  In that post, I was attempting to map the mixed-zone riding I was doing in the hills of California, my Alpine ride, to the training plan given in “Distance Cycling” by John Hughes and Dan Kehlenbach. For that analysis, I continued to use my old Zombie Zones, and using those zones, came up with the amount of time spent in each zone shown in the chart at the top of the post. Using those zone distributions I concluded that my Alpine ride gave a mix of Zone 2 and Zone 3 which was a good match for the training plan I was using from Hughes and Kehlenbach. But as I continued to think about the Hughes book, I started to wonder how those distributions would change if I had used the Hughes zones, and as is shown in that chart, they changed significantly. Using the Hughes zone distributions, the Alpine ride provided much more Zone 3 riding and much less Zone 2 riding than the plan I was trying to approximate. But which of those two zone systems is the proper one to use? As of today, my thinking is neither of them. The Hughes and Kehlenbach book contains a third set of zone definitions that lie somewhere between the Zombie Zones and the Hughes Zones. A principle I have come up with is that there is probably some interplay between the different zone systems used by different coaches and their training recommendations such that one should be consistent about using the zones and recommendations from the same coach. So, if the goal of this post were to revise my 100K plan (which it is not) I would do so using the Hughes and Kehlenbach zones. But if that revision is not the goal of this post, what is, and how did I end up selecting the Hughes zones?

Over the years, I had collected about a dozen different zone definitions. One reason I didn’t immediately switch to the Hughes zones when I first came across them in 2019 was that it was not obvious why I should select these zones as opposed to any of the others. Since then, there have been three significant changes that have affected my training. The first is my move into a home in a hillier neighborhood, a change that I believe resulted in overtraining, chronic fatigue, and poor performance. The second, a response to the first, is that I have resumed using a heart rate monitor after riding without one for five years. The third has been an evolution in my thinking about training. My current training is based on my personal experience combined with a personalized application of ideas of Coach John Hughes. Given this evolution, rather than trying to adapt training plans from Hughes and Kehlenbach to the hills in which I ride, I am more likely to invent training plans based on the ideas of Coach Hughes. Thus, in order to be consistent, I have adopted the Hughes Zones.

I’d like to introduce one last complication before ending. When it comes to riding for health, although I certainly listen to Coach John Hughes, there are a set of recommendations from the medical community to which I give priority, their advice to engage in at least 150 minutes and ideally 300 minutes of Moderate Intensity aerobic exercise or at least 75 minutes and ideally  150 minutes of Vigorous Intensity aerobic exercise a week, in any combination. That is, 200 minutes of Moderate Intensity combined with 50 minutes of Vigorous Intensity exercise in a week counts as meeting the ideal recommendation. But what counts as Moderate or Vigorous Intensity? The Mayo Clinic has provided a definition of these in terms of heart rate; Moderate Intensity (for me) is a heart rate between 90 and 125 bpm and Vigorous Intensity between 126 and 153 bpm. (I have no idea how the medical community would have me count the cycling I do at heart rates above 153 bpm.) Whatever training plans I come up with, I try to make sure that they at least meet the ideal recommendations of the Medical Community. In future posts, I will describe how I am planning on using the new heart rate training zones described in this post to help me design future training plans. Stay tuned. 

2019: A Very Good Year

In my second post after moving to California I described my new Go-To ride, a ride I would do when I couldn't think of anything better, a ride I later named my Alpine ride. Fairly quickly, I noticed that how fast I completed that ride seemed to be an indicator of my level of Form, where Form is a measure of my ability to ride fast and/or for long distances. Form is increased by Fitness but also decreased by Fatigue: Form = Fitness - Fatigue. About a year after developing the Alpine ride I was looking for a ride that was a bit longer and found an extension that added about 11 miles, taking it from 23 to 34 miles. When I moved from San Carlos to Emerald Hills in 2020, I was able to continue these two rides albeit with minor modifications that reduced their length to 22 and 33 miles. In 2021, I posted a statistical analysis that indicated that my average speed on all four of these rides was very similar such that I could average them all together for estimating my Form. The graph at the top of this post is my monthly average speed on those four rides from when I first moved to California and started doing them until mid-2021 when my riding changed such that my speed on those rides stopped being comparable, changes which I will explain at the end of this post.

In a follow-up to the post showing I could average my Alpine-Like rides  I compared my monthly average speed  to how many hours I trained each month. There was no measurable correlation between the two. Clearly, that can’t be true in an absolute sense, if I never trained, my performance would have to go down eventually, but the reason it seemed to be true is that I ride pretty regularly, so there aren’t big changes in my training from month to month and also because an increase in training will have two opposite effects; it will increase my Fitness but also will increase my Fatigue such that these opposite effects of training will, to some extent, cancel each other out. And yet, there have been significant month to month changes in my Form. The most noticeable thing about the graph at the top of this post is the big peak in my Form that occurred at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020. The purpose of this post is to think about possible causes for that peak.

This is not the first post in which I wondered about that peak. In June of 2020, four months after that peak, I described  a wild goose chase I had followed. By chance, I had retrieved my Bianchi Volpe after an overhaul at my local bike shop, Veloro Bicycles, right before this peak in Form and so developed the false hypothesis that Veloro had somehow made this bike much faster. By the time I wrote the post I knew that was not the correct explanation, but all I had to offer as an alternative was “it must have been something I accidentally did right in my training.” Besides being uselessly vague, that was actually an invalid conclusion, characteristics of my bike and training are not the only possible explanations. As just one example, the overall state of my health could also be a factor. And finally, none of these explanations are exclusive. Perhaps I had a run of good luck in terms of avoiding colds and other illnesses, that perhaps Veloro did make my bike a bit faster, but that in addition, my training contributed, though as noted above, it wasn’t by simply spending more (or fewer) hours on the bike. What could be true is that the quality of my training improved, even though there was little change in quantity. One important variable is Intensity, how hard (e.g. fast) I ride. About a year ago, I blogged about how I might include measures of Intensity in the evaluation of my training and how my acquisition of my TranyaGo heart rate monitor might make this possible going forward. However,  that doesn’t help me looking back at that peak.

The new idea that inspired this post is that my peak of performance in 2019/2020 might be due more to the events I rode than the training I did for them. In the figure at the top of the post I have added colored stars to the graph, each star (but one) representing an event I rode. (The exception is the red star at the right side of the graph which represents the Art of Survival event which I did not ride because I was unable to complete the training for it.) Red represents the Art of Survival. Black represents the Death Ride. Yellow represents Golden Hills. Blue represents a local, solo metric century I rode. Note that the beginning of my peak of performance began with the first of these in 2019, The Art of Survival. I rode that event with my high school buddy, Roger, who is a much stronger cyclist than I, and I found it tremendously challenging. Fortunately, I recovered from that ride pretty quickly, which is where the good luck/health may have come in. I then trained very hard for the next event, the Death Ride, which was one of the most difficult rides of my life. I then had a couple of months of relatively light riding, in part because my son’s wedding occurred during that period, and then jumped into very focused training for the Golden Hills Metric Century. I did not suffer the exhaustion on that ride that I did for the Art of Survival and the Death Ride, but I did have 25 miles in the middle where I was keeping up with my much faster friends, Roger and Dave, and was riding as fast as I possibly could, so again, a real stretch. At that point I was feeling quite fatigued, but managed to complete a solo metric century a month later, at which point my fatigue, the weather, and family events conspired to reduce my cycling. In summary, each of these events produced an enormous amount of training Load that resulted in a tremendous amount of both Fitness and Fatigue. Once I allowed time for that Fatigue dissipate, this left me with a higher level of Form for the next event, and so on.

What did I learn from this very good year? First, I have to acknowledge that luck played a significant part in it. Besides having good health during that year, I also somehow managed to push my riding right up to the limit of my body’s capabilities without quite going over. However, one thing did occur to me that has the advantage of being something I might be able to use in the future: a good training strategy for me seems to be very intense efforts followed by a lower level of effort until I feel my fatigue is completely gone. This is contrary to my natural tendency to ride very regularly, not ignoring how I feel, but perhaps not giving those feelings as much attention as I should. I don’t yet know how I will incorporate this new hypothesis into my training, but it has given me something to think about.

So how and why did I change the way I ride my Alpine-Like rides such that I can no longer use them as a measurement of my Form? In May of 2021, I failed to complete the longest ride in my preparation for the Art of Survival Metric Century. I realized I was fighting Fatigue and cut back on my training. One way that I did that is that I consciously made the decision to ride my Alpine-Like rides more slowly, thus making them not comparable to my previous Alpine-Like rides. This decision was cemented about six months ago when I acquired my TranyaGo heart rate monitor. Previously, my Alpine-Like rides had been ridden about 50% in heart rate Zone 2, 50% in heart rate Zone 3. Now I make a conscious decision about what heart rate zone I want to complete the ride in, usually Zone 2, and use the heart rate monitor to enforce that decision. Finally, I am doing many fewer Alpine-Like rides than I used to because there is a new Go-To ride in town, the Cañada ride, which I strongly prefer. All of this has left me with no way to estimate my level of Fitness, something I am working to correct. Stay tuned to see what I come up with.

The Cañada and Stephens-Alpine Go-To Routes

 

Since the last time I talked about Go-To routes, I have added three new ones. The table at the top of the post is a list of my current Go To routes with the new ones highlighted in yellow. I have also renamed two routes, New Alpine has been renamed to simply Alpine, and similarly, New Alpine-Cañada to Alpine-Cañada. The previous routes which used to have those names I renamed to Old Alpine and Old Alpine-Cañada. The routes are listed from most difficult to easiest.

Miles is how long the ride is, in terms of distance. Minutes is how long it is in terms of the time it takes to complete. A hillier ride will take longer per mile, and also this number varies from ride to ride, depending on how fast I decide to ride the route. Feet is how much total climbing there is on the route, and Feet/Mile provides one metric of how hard the ride is, though of course I always have the option, within limits, of taking it easy up the hills. Subjective Intensity is how hard or easy a ride is per minute of riding. A one hour ride on a hard route leaves me more tired than a one hour ride on an easy route. If you look at the table closely, it may seem that the Subjective Intensity of the Emerald Hills ride is out of line. The reason is that I almost always do that ride on my eBike which reduces the effort required to complete it.

Is every route I ride on this list? No, only the ones I ride fairly regularly. Arguably, the Lake Loop route should now be removed from the list and there are one or two that maybe could have been added. These decisions are fairly arbitrary and will almost certainly change over time.

In the descriptions below, I explain the purpose of the three new routes and what they add to the routes I was already riding.

Cañada

The new Cañada route is something of an alternative to the Alpine route. It is a bit shorter, but the important difference is that it is significantly more pleasant to ride. It has a lot less traffic and it is prettier. Whatever I am planning, however low my enthusiasm might be, I always try to get in 300 minutes a week of what the medical community refers to as moderate intensity rides in order to maintain my health. I can easily ride on my trainer at the lower end of that intensity and this new Cañada ride is at the high end of that intensity. If I alternate Cañada rides and Trainer rides, taking off one day a week, this adds up to 330 minutes, more than enough to maintain my health.

Stephens-Alpine and Stephens-Cañada

I developed the “Old Stephens-Alpine” and “Old Stephens-Cañada” routes while living in San Carlos as longer rides to help me prepare for a metric century. The current versions are very similar to the old versions, relating to them in exactly the same way that the newer Alpine and Alpine-Cañada routes relate to the old ones. The map above shows the Stephens-Alpine route. The Stephens-Cañada route relates to that one in the same way the Alpine-Cañada route relates to the Alpine route. If you look back at the Cañada route, it has a stem-loop structure. The Stephens-Cañada and Alpine-Cañada routes are created by inserting 11.4 miles out and back on that stem into the Stephens-Alpine and Alpine routes.

Why am I adding these routes to the Go To list now? For a couple of reasons. The first is that originally, I tried a number of different longer routes to prepare for a metric century and I now think I have settled on these. The second is that I have started riding the Stephens-Alpine route more regularly, not just when I am preparing for a metric century, but sometimes when I am just in the mood for a longer ride or when I feel like it might benefit my fitness.

In the late winter/early spring of 2020, a house came on the market just steps away from my grandkids. As I was debating purchasing it, my son argued that “better cycling” was a plus in that consideration. He argued that the scenery in Emerald Hills was much nicer than in San Carlos. He was right. I argued the opposite, that “worse cycling” was a minus in that consideration. I argued that the hills would make it hard for me to find a riding schedule I could sustain. I was right. Immediately after moving into this new house, my Form (my ability to ride fast and/or long, increased by Fitness and reduced by Fatigue) seemed to improve. However, that improvement was not sustainable. After about four months my Form began to fall and then stayed low for the next nine months. As a result of that, I was unable to prepare for the 2021 running of the Art of Survival Metric Century. I believe that both the early improvement and later decline were the result of the hills in my neighborhood which resulted in an increase in my training Load, an increase which first increased Fitness but which also produced an increase in Fatigue. Since then, I have done three things to decrease my training Load: 

1. I began using my trainer for easy rides.
2. I began using my TranyaGo sports watch to help me avoid riding too fast.
3. I developed new routes, including the routes described in this post. 

The goal of these changes was to reduce the training Load of my schedule and it seems like these efforts have succeeded. I firmly believe that the routes described here have contributed to that success.

Using the TranyaGO

Heart rate on a four hour ride in which I attempted to ride at Heart Rate Zone 2 (110-135 bpm.) I was mostly successful doing that for the first 2½ hours but then my heart rate began to drift upwards even while I kept my effort constant, a phenomenon known as decoupling.

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Two posts ago I described the inexpensive fitness watch I recently purchased, a TranyaGO. I have now been using it for about 4 months and 50 rides. It continues to work almost* flawlessly. I would revise nothing in that post. It has also changed the way I ride, and that is the topic of this post.

I need to begin with a confession. I am not yet using the heart rate data provided by this device 100% correctly. Specifically, I have not properly defined my heart rate zones. Different heart rate zones are supposed to correspond to different physiological states such that exercise in these different zones have different training benefits. Most important to me at the moment is that, according to most coaches, including Coach John Hughes who I follow, training to improve endurance should be done in Heart Rate Zone 2. The problem is that the heart rates corresponding to Zone 2 will be different both for different coaches and, even for the same coach, will be different for different athletes. Because I am following Coach Hughes, the coach-specific part of this is taken care of; Coach Hughes says Zone 2 has a lower boundary of 69% of my anaerobic threshold heart rate and an upper bound of 83% of my anaerobic threshold heart rate. My responsibility as an athlete is to determine my anaerobic threshold heart rate. But what is an anaerobic threshold heart rate and how would I go about determining mine? I have blogged a very detailed discussion of the physiology relevant to that threshold but operationally the usual way to determine that is to measure my average heart rate during a time trial. Different coaches have different versions of this. In 2014, the version I was using was the average heart rate during the last 20 minutes of a 30 minute time trial. Back then, I rode three such  time trials and my average heart rates were 161, 162, and 163 bpm for those three rides. For the sake of simplicity and as an acknowledgement of the uncertainty in that measurement I called it 160 bpm. That was fine back in 2014 but most definitely should be updated now, eight years later. I have some weak evidence from the 50 or so rides I have tracked with the TranyaGO that my anaerobic threshold heart rate may not be very different from what I measured back in 2014 so that is what I am using until I can repeat that measurement. Using the 2014 value of 160 beats per minute means that, for me, Zone 2 extends from approximately 110 to approximately 135 beats per minute. (Again, I rounded the numbers slightly for convenience.)

The first ride I did with the TranyaGO was to wear it while riding on my trainer as an easy way to see if it worked. I learned two things from that ride: 1) It works. I varied my pace and compared my heart rate as determined by holding my fingers against my wrist and counting beats to what was reported by the TranyaGO and they were the same. 2) I mostly use my trainer for recovery rides, 30 minute rides at 60 rpm at low resistance. It turns out that my heart rate on such a ride is just below 90 bpm, definitely a Zone 1 ride which is what a recovery ride is supposed to be. That said, based on this result, I have revised my Trainer ride slightly. Looking back on all the heart rate zone recommendations I have accumulated over the years, I rediscovered one from the Mayo Clinic. For training purposes, I am sticking with the recommendations of Coach Hughes, but the Mayo recommendations concern not training but exercise for health; they are about what constitutes “Light”,”Medium”, and “Vigorous” exercise according to the medical community. The recommendation of the medical community is that I engage in at least 300 minutes a week of Moderate exercise or 150 minutes a week of Vigorous exercise or any combination of the two. The medical community gives no credit for Light exercise. A complication in calculating the Mayo numbers is that they are based on my Maximum Heart Rate rather than my Anaerobic Threshold Heart Rate. Maximum Heart Rate is much more difficult to measure and arguably, my doing so would be risky for an old man like me. What I have done is estimate my Maximum Heart Rate at 180 bpm based on weak evidence from the TranyaGO rides I have done to date. Using that estimate, the Mayo “zones” are below 90 bpm for Light Exercise, 90 to 126 bpm for Moderate Exercise, and 126 to 153 bpm for Vigorous exercise. These zone definitions have all sorts of implications but for the purpose of this post I will just note that my Trainer rides are, for training purposes, supposed to be in Zone 1 which, according to Hughes, is below 110 bpm. However, if I ride them above 90 bpm, they count as Moderate exercise for health purposes; I get credit for them! Thus, I have been wearing my TranyaGO on the trainer and monitoring it as I ride to try to keep my heart rate between 90 and 110 bpm during these rides.

A few days after the Trainer ride described above, I wore my TranyaGO on an Alpine-Like ride. Alpine-Like rides are some of my most frequent rides as well as the rides I had been using to assess my fitness. (This is the one ride for which I have heart rate data from my old heart rate monitor.) For that ride I used the TranyaGO real time; I kept my eye on my heart rate as I rode and based on that attempted to keep my ride within Zone 2. Even doing that, 14% of the ride was at a heart rate above Zone 2. Before getting the TranyaGO I had been arguing that it was impossible for me to do a pure Zone 2 ride in the hills in which I live, and the TranyaGO seems to confirm that pessimism but also suggested that if I cannot do a perfect Zone 2 ride, I can do a better one. Before getting the TranyaGO, a typical Alpine-Like ride was 50% above Zone 2. Reducing the "too strenuous" fraction of an Alpine-Like ride from 50% to 14% is such an improvement. But there is a price for that improvement, my average speed on that ride fell dramatically. My overall average speed on all my Alpine-Like rides is 12.3 mph, and in fact the ride where 50% of the ride was "too fast" was ridden at 12.3 mph. When I used my TranyaGO to keep the "too fast" part of the ride down to 14%, my speed fell to 10.8 mph, a speed at the lower 2% of my rides. More recently, I wore the TranyaGO on an Alpine-Like ride where my goal was not to stay in Zone 2 but to see how fast I could comfortably ride it as a way to estimate my current fitness. I rode it at 13.3 mph, in the top 3% of my ride speeds. My heart rate during that ride was above Zone 2 almost 100% of that ride, it was essentially a Zone 3 ride. I have been speculating for some time that how fast I ride an Alpine-Like ride is an important parameter affecting my training program and the TranyaGO has confirmed that.

As described in my previous TranyaGO post, using the TranyaGO real time, watching my heart rate while I ride, is difficult on the road. (It is more do-able on my trainer.) In fact, the one ride described above is the only road ride where I have tried to do that. In every other road ride with the TranyaGO, I put it on, set it to record, and then ignore it until the ride is over. I then upload the results to my computer and compare them to what I was attempting to do, providing feedback that helps me evaluate the training I actually did rather than what I had planned to do and helps me better calibrate my next ride.The subtext of this is that I am bad at using Relative Perceived Exertion (how fast I feel like I am riding) to assess the Intensity (strenuousness) of my rides. Recently, I have been riding my 1963 Bianchi Specialissima over one of my old routes from my San Carlos days. (I will be discussing that route in more detail in a future post.) One reason I started doing those rides was, because this route is less hilly than the rides I can do in Emerald Hills, I thought it might be easier to maintain my Intensity in Zone 2. In my first attempt, over 50% of my time was spent below Zone 2, in Zone 1. That ride was much too easy, giving me too little training benefit. So, a few days later, I tried again. In that second attempt, more than 50% of my time was spent above Zone 2, the ride was too strenuous to provide a maximal increase in my endurance, which is what I am working on. On the third attempt, 9% of my time was spent below and 8% above Zone 2, so that over 80% of the ride was in my target Intensity of Zone 2. This is how the TranyaGO is helping me, it gives me the feedback I need after a ride to help me calibrate the Perceived part of my Relative Perceived Exertion.

I want to mention one more thing I have learned from my TranyaGO. Recently, I have been trying to do some longer rides on a routine basis. The route that I am using for that is 45 miles long and takes me about four hours to complete. My next longest “GoTo” ride is 33 miles long and takes me just under three hours to complete. I have gotten pretty good now at keeping my 33 mile ride in Zone 2 but on the 45 mile ride, that breaks down after about two and a half hours: my heart rate drifts upwards. What I believe is going on is something the coaching community calls decoupling. I think if I had been using a power meter to measure my output on that ride I would have found that I was not riding more vigorously for the last hour and a half but rather my heart rate was increasing at constant effort, the definition of decoupling. That actually makes a lot of sense. My body is used to riding for two or three hours, but when I go beyond that, the length of the ride itself becomes a stressor and in response my heart rate increases. What this means is that my 45 mile ride generates much more fatigue relative to my 33 mile ride than just the difference in durations would suggest.

I feel like the TranyaGO has really benefitted my training, a conclusion I admit is subjective. Because it encourages me to slow down to stay within Zone 2, I feel like I have been able to ride more miles with less fatigue. Before the TranyaGO, I felt like my risk of overtraining after my move to Emerald Hills had increased. I now feel like the TranyaGO has reversed that, that now my risk of overtraining is lower than it was before the move. But only time will tell. Stay tuned.

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* I have had between 3 to 5 instances of “glitches” with the TranyaGO. Some or all of those might have been due to user error.

Ride the Rogue

Back in May I was scheduled to ride The Art of Survival with my high school buddy Roger and my training for that event had gone flawlessly but the weather didn't cooperate and I did not attend. About a month ago I got an email from Roger: “Call me about Ride the Rogue.” Ride the Rogue is a metric century starting in the town of Rogue River, Oregon. There is a river named The Rogue River, and it is after that river that the town and the ride are named. The start and finish of that ride are about a half hour away from the town of Jacksonville, Oregon where Roger’s brother-in-law, David lives with his wife Sarah. Both David and Sarah were riding, as were Roger and his wife Janet and then they invited me along. This is the same group of us who attended Eroica back in April We were getting the band back together!

A month was not enough time to complete my standard* training schedule for a metric century but I had been training quite a bit and so felt I was in pretty good shape, and besides, I had been rethinking that standard training plan. Conventional wisdom is that when preparing for a ride where the main challenge is the length (a brevet, a century, a metric century, etc.) the longest training ride should be between ⅔ and ¾ as long as the challenge. Ride the Rogue is 63 miles long, and thus my longest training ride should, by that standard, be between 42 and 47 miles long. The second longest and longest rides in my “standard” plan are 45 and 56 miles long, the 56 mile ride is longer than it needs to be and in fact the second longest should be long enough. By eliminating the 56 mile ride, I would be able to complete my training for that ride, and that is what I did. An interesting implication of that is that had I used this new plan for Art of Survival back in 2021, I would have completed the plan and attended the ride, avoiding a major trauma in my recent cycling history. That said, it is not clear that would have been wise given how tired I was feeling back then, but it does make me wonder.

Roger and David are much stronger riders than I, a fact I don’t see changing no matter how I train. For that reason, when I rode with Roger and Janet and David and Sarah at Eroica, I did a shorter ride with Janet and Sarah rather than the longer, harder ride that David and Roger did. Thus, when Roger invited me on Ride the Rogue, I wondered if I might do that again. “No,” Roger said, “bring your eBike, David and I will draft off of you.” I hoped he was joking, for I knew, even with my eBike, we would be evenly matched at best. That said, it sounded like a plan so that’s what I did. My Orbea Gain eBike had been riding a bit rough recently, so I took it in to my LBS, Veloro Bicycles and they fixed it up in time for my 45 mile training ride. It has never ridden better, thank you Veloro!!

David and Sarah had invited me to stay in their gorgeous home. Roger and Janet were staying there as well which made for a wonderful social experience. I arrived late Friday afternoon, we got up early the next morning to drive the 30 minutes to the 8:30 am start, and we were off. 

Sarah and Janet were supposed to start their 40 mile ride at 9:30 but because the beginning of their route and ours were the same, they started early with us so that we could all ride the beginning together. The metric century featured three rest stops which were first rate, having all the essentials; bathrooms, water, and a variety of snacks including the cyclist favorites, PB&J and bananas. The ride never felt crowded. We would see other cyclists occasionally along the route and there would be several at each rest stop but most of the time it was the three of us riding alone. The first part of the ride was on very quiet roads through beautiful mountains covered with pine forests. Virtually all of the 2200 feet of climbing was in this part of the ride. This was followed by a stretch on flatter, busier roads, not as magnificent as what came before but perfectly acceptable. The purpose of this event was to raise money to extend the bike paths that run along the Rogue River, so appropriately, the last stretch was on the paths we were supporting. The paths were wonderful. In case it is not obvious, I heartily recommend this ride!

So how did my ride go? Was my training sufficient? How does a metric century with eAssist compare with a metric century on a conventional bike? How was my Orbea as a long distance bike? The ride went well, I was able to keep up with Roger and David and I never got too tired, suggesting my training was sufficient (and also not excessive, which would have left me fit but too tired to make use of that fitness.) The fact that I was able to keep up with Roger and David is a tribute to the eAssist. My Orbea has three levels of assist as well as a no-assist option (level 0.) I rode my 45 mile training ride entirely at level 0 to increase the training that ride provided. When I ride around my neighborhood at Level 1, at the end of 3 hours of riding, I have about 21% of the battery charge left, not enough for a 4th hour. I estimated that this metric century would take me about 5 hours to complete, so I knew I could not use the assist, even at level 1, for the whole ride, so during the ride I turned it off when I could keep up without it and only turned it on when I needed it. At the end of the ride, which lasted 4 hours 49 minutes, I had 22% of my charge left. Both times I rode the Golden Hills Metric Century, I averaged 13.3 miles per hour. In this metric, I also averaged 13.3 miles per hour. This would seem like the eAssist gave me no benefit, but this ride had 2201 feet of climbing whereas Golden Hills only had 1517 feet of climbing, so the eAssist basically made up for the extra climbing. Also, I think I was less tired at the end of this ride than I was at the end of those two Golden Hills Metrics. My Orbea was great to ride, it only had one issue. Near the end, I had a puncture caused by a thorn from where I parked my bike at the last rest stop. That is not, of course, a problem with the bike, but how hard it was to repair was. It took many tries with the three of us working together to first get the tire off and then back on. I am pretty sure that I would be unable to repair a flat by myself which, if I cannot remedy this, limits the usefulness of this bike.

Anyway, we did get the flat fixed, made it to the end, and rejoined Sarah and Janet who had been waiting for us for a couple of hours. Fortunately there was both beer and a band at the start/finish line so they didn’t mind. Here is the group picture we took at the finish line:

As a final point, I am starting to feel like 2022 might be the year I came to peace with COVID. I have argued in previous posts that the reason I did not attend the 2021 The Art of Survival metric century was because of training issues. I have to confess, however, that a contributing factor was my concern about COVID. The delta variant had just started to surge back then, undermining the confidence that the COVID vaccine had just given us. I’m not sure that, logically, anything has changed all that significantly since then. Then we had the Delta variant, now we have the Omicron variant. Very recently, a vaccine specific for the Omicron vaccine has become available, but I was unable to get vaccinated before this ride so that couldn’t account for my new confidence. While it is true that back in 2021 Delta was waxing and in 2022 Omicron is waning, I don’t feel like that explains it either. Perhaps one more year of experience with this virus, seeing what benefits the vaccine can still supply, is what did it. Whatever the cause, the fact is that last year, in 2021, the prospect of navigating gas stations, bathrooms, and the like during the seven hour drive to and from the ride seemed overwhelming this year a similar drive seemed manageable. The net result is that in 2020 and 2021, I rode no group rides, whereas in 2022, I have ridden two. Let’s hope 2023 is even better!

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* I have successfully completed this “standard” training plan (including the ride itself) only once, for the 2019 Golden Hills Metric Century. However, that ride went so well I declared the training plan I used for it a standard.

The TranyaGO Sports Watch

Ever since moving to California I have been ambivalent about the usefulness of a heart rate monitor. My main use for one back in Texas was for my MAF test rides. Those rides were done on the Rice University Bike Track. I can not do MAF tests here in California because there is nothing near me at all equivalent to that Bike Track. Thus, it would appear that I have no use for a heart rate monitor, so when mine broke, I wasn't very motivated to replace it. Contributing to my reluctance to replace my heart rate monitor is that I don't really like wearing the chest straps that were a feature of all the heart rate monitors I had used up to that point. And yet, I kept finding myself asking questions about my training that could have been answered with heart rate data and and I kept finding that I was relying way too much on the one California ride where I did have heart rate data. I looked longingly at the Apple Watch: heart rate data without a chest strap. However, this solution had two potential problems: 1) Although it would get rid of the chest strap which I dislike, for that very reason I was not convinced that its heart rate measurement would be accurate and reliable. 2) It is crazy expensive. So back and forth, back and forth, month after month, until finally, the other day, I decided to just do something spontaneous, to purchase a cheap ($40) sports watch. Perhaps I would learn how accurate and reliable wrist-based (as opposed to the chest-strap based) heart beat detection is. More generally, it has been my life experience that often the best way to figure something out is to just play with it, there is often no substitute for real world experience. Perhaps by playing with a sports watch I would have a clearer idea of what I wanted. Perhaps it would even be useful in its own right. After browsing the ratings on Amazon, I settled on the TranyaGO.

Given the price, my expectations for this device were low, though I was hoping to be surprised. In particular, I was hoping it would be able to be interfaced with Strava. When my bike computer (and thus my heart rate monitor) stopped working a few months after I arrived in California, I switched to using the Strava app on my cell phone to track my rides. It has very similar functionality to the Garmin, doesn't require any equipment other than my cell phone, and is free. There is a paid version with enhanced functionality, and although I don't object in principle to paying for Strava, I have not felt a need for any of the enhanced functions so continue to use the free version. If the TranyaGo had been able to interface with Strava, the biggest missing piece of functionality, heart rate data, would have been seamlessly added to my current tracking system. Unfortunately, I have not been able to get that to work. Should that change, I will at least add a comment to this post or maybe even write an all new post but for now I am assuming that functionality is not available. What the TranyaGo will interface with is their own cell phone app which they name GloryFit (I kid you not.) So for the remainder of this post I will be reviewing the TranyaGO/GloryFit combo.

The TranyaGO is nice piece of hardware, astonishingly so given the price. When my son first saw me wearing it, he mistook it for an Apple Watch. On the other hand, in terms of functionality, it is closer to what I imagine a FitBit to be. (I have never used a FitBit but I have seen it being used by my son.) The TranyaGO has an odd, hodgepodge of functionality primarily directed towards the folks who are working on their fitness by accumulating "steps" (walking), e.g. the FitBit crowd, but with odd additions presumably designed to attract other users. For example, text messages from my phone appear on this watch, an Apple Watch-like bit of functionality. And, although the TranyaGO seems to be focused on counting steps, it does have the ability to track a large number of different sports, outdoor (normal) bicycling and stationary bicycling being the ones of interest to me. I have tried both and actually don't know what the difference between the two might be, the outputs look the same to my eye.

The critical piece of functionality from a hardware perspective is the ability of the TranyaGO to measure my heart rate. One of my main justifications for purchasing this watch was to compare the ability of a wrist-based sensor to that of the more conventional chest-based sensor. In terms of that, I could not be more delighted. Ideally I would have tested it by wearing both the TranyaGO and a chest sensor and compare the outputs, but I do not currently have a functional chest strap and am not willing to purchase one for such a test, so my evaluation is not very rigorous, I have based it on "plausibility", does the heart rate data I get from the TranyaGO seem reasonable, and a few spot checks where I compare what the TranyaGO reports to what I measure by putting my fingers on an artery (the conventional, old fashioned test.) With the chest straps I have used, reliability has been an issue, some days they would not work and eventually all of them stopped working altogether; the only solution was to replace them. So far, I have not had even one single issue with the TranyaGO. To be fair, I haven't used it that long and with the chest straps problems seemed to have developed over time, so we will see, but so far, so good. And finally, its wrist based heart rate detection is totally comfortable. I now wear the TranyaGO on every ride because it only takes a second to put on and I don't even notice I am wearing it.

So what is the functionality that is available to me? It was more or less what I had realistically expected when I purchased the watch and can be divided into two parts:
1) Real time functionality.
2) Downloadable (after the ride) functionality.

Real Time Functionality: Back when I was using my Garmin heart rate monitor, I purchased a standalone Polar heart rate monitor as a backup. The way I used the Polar was to strap it onto my handlebars where I could see it and keep my eye on my heart rate as I rode. That allowed me to keep my heart rate between 130 and 140 beats per minute (BPM) while riding a MAF test. I hoped to use the TranyaGO in the same way during my Alpine rides to see if I could complete them while keeping my heart rate between 110 and 135 BPM, Coach Hughes' version of Zone 2. It turned out I could do that but just barely, the Real Time functionality of the TranyaGO was less than that of my old Polar. The problems are three-fold: First, unlike the Polar, which used a chest strap, because the TranyaGO contains its detector which measures heartbeat from my wrist, it can never be moved to the handlebars like the Polar. Second, the TranyaGO turns off the screen after 15 seconds (presumably to extend battery life). I can reactivate it by lifting my arm, not impossible but annoying. Third, the visibility of the TranyaGO screen is lower than that of the Polar. This prevented me from wearing my cycling sunglasses, I simply cannot read the screen with them on. Although I can barely read the screen without glasses, I can both provide a little eye protection and improve my ability to read the screen by wearing my normal, prescription glasses. (My sunglasses are not prescription because my distance vision is fine, I wear prescription glasses for reading.) From a riding perspective, this is not as good as wearing the sunglasses but is not unacceptable and in fact I completed a 2 hour ride this way and in the process accumulated some interesting information (which I will describe in a future post.) However, it is sufficiently awkward that I do not expect to do this very often. Rather, I expect to mostly use the downloadable functionality.

Downloadable Functionality: My Polar watch did not have any download capability. At the end of the ride there was some kind of summary on the watch face which I basically ignored. The TranyaGO works with the GloryFit app on my phone to download a summary of the ride. That summary consists of two screens: one displays how long the ride lasted, minimum, average and maximum heart rate, and estimate of calories burned. This can be uploaded to my computer as a screenshot but it is easier to simply transcribe any of those numbers that are of interest from the app. The second output has turned out to be much more useful. It is a graph of heart rate over the course of the ride:

The procedure I have developed, using my favorite image manipulation application, Graphic Converter, is to add guidelines to indicate the boundaries of Zone 2:

All by itself this is useful because I can see at a glance how I effective I have been at maximizing the Zone 2 training that should be the foundation of my training. But for a little extra effort I can use this same software to estimate the percent of my ride spent in, above, or below Zone 2. (Extending this into other Zones is straightforward should I ever want to do so.) This process is a little labor intensive but not so much so that I can't do it as part of my general process of ride logging; I can easily complete it right after finishing a ride.

So is TranyaGO everything I need, am I done with my heart rate monitor quest? Maybe. Arguably, even the TranyaGO is more than I need, that is the debate I had been having with myself before its purchase. However, at the time of this writing, I have used the TranyaGO on 22 rides and already I am addicted; I feel that I have both a better understanding of the intensity of my rides and better control over the amount of time I spend riding in different intensity zones. It would be nice to have more detailed heart rate data and to have the Time In Zone information calculated automatically rather than having to be dragged out of an image, but I see this solution being good enough to keep me from putting in the effort to acquire anything better, so yes, I am done with the heart rate monitor quest, at least for now. I can't wait until I have accumulated enough data to be worth another blog post.

 

Coach Hughes on Riding for Health

Coach John Hughes publishes regularly on the Road Bike Rider website, both downloadable eBooks that can be purchased and columns that can be read for free. This post is about one of those columns, the one entitled "Anti-Aging: The Optimal Training Weeks*", dated June 24, 2021. One of the things that originally attracted me to Hughes is that he covers training for a wider variety of goals than any other coach I have encountered. In this column he covered something that has been on my mind a lot. That is, when I am not training for an event, when I am just training to maintain fitness and stay healthy, what is a reasonable ride schedule? Not only did he cover it, he covered it with older riders like me in mind.

Coach Hughes' schedule for health, shown in the first three rows of the chart above, contains rides at three levels of Intensity (effort): Recovery, corresponding on an easy ride in Heart Rate Zone 1, Endurance, corresponding to a ride at moderate effort in Heart Rate Zone 2, and Tempo, corresponding to a ride at moderately high effort in Heart Rate Zone 3. This schedule is part of Coach Hughes overall "Anti-Aging" plan which closely follows the recommendations of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM). The overall plan also includes strength training, flexibility training, and balance training (none of which I will be discussing in this post). When I say Hughes has older riders in mind, I mean two different things: 1) He discusses what an older rider is still physically capable of doing. 2) He discusses what an older rider should do to slow their rate of aging. 

Where did Hughes get his Normal/Fit/Vigorous weekly exercise schedules? Very generally, they come from the ACSM but with some pretty significant changes. [Clarity Note: Unfortunately, Hughes and the ACSM use the word "Vigorous" for different things. Do not confuse the ACSM's use of Vigorous for an Intensity Level (equivalent to Hughes' "Tempo") and Hughes use of the word Vigorous to describe a weekly exercise schedule.] The ACSM's recommendation is for a minimum of 150 minutes a week of Moderate Intensity aerobic exercise or 75 minutes of Vigorous Intensity aerobic activity a week or any combination of the two (e.g. 100 minutes of Moderate Intensity and 25 minutes of Vigorous Intensity.) Their goal is twice that, 300 minutes a week of Moderate Intensity or 150 minutes of Vigorous Intensity or any combination of the two. They note that there may be additional benefits of exercising even more than their goal. What does the ACSM mean by Moderate and Vigorous Intensity? This has always confused me because there are many different definitions of these terms (which are widely used in the medical literature) but for the purposes of this post it is reasonable to suggest that Moderate Intensity is Heart Rate Zone 2, described as Endurance Training by Hughes, and that Vigorous Intensity is Heart Rate Zone 3, described as Tempo Training by Hughes. Anything below Moderate (e.g. Zone 1/Recovery) is termed Light Exercise by the ACSM and they believe it has no medical benefit.

Coach Hughes defines four levels of weekly exercise; below the ACSM minimum, at the ACSM minimum, at the ACSM goal, and above the the ACSM goal. He names these levels Unhealthy, Normal, Fit, and Vigorous. Here's where Hughes' recommendations differ from those of the ACSM:

• Hughes recommends some riding in Zone 1 which the ASM sees as having no value.
• The total of Hughes minutes of exercise (even excluding the Zone 1 rides) is significantly above that suggested by the ACSM. 
• ACSM assumes all rides are about the same length whereas Hughes recommends varying the length of rides pretty significantly.
• The ACSM has no preference for Moderate vs. Vigorous exercise, they suggest athletes mix and match these as they wish. Hughes believes that it is valuable to exercise at specific Intensity levels for specific amounts of time, e.g. 75 minutes/week in Zone 1, 300 minutes/week in Zone 2, and 45 minutes/week in Zone 3 in his Fit schedule.
• Hughes includes warmup and cool down in the time he gives for each ride, ACSM does not. That means that when the ACSM suggests a 60 minute ride Coach Hughes would include warmup and cool down so would describe the exact same rides as a 75 minute ride. (This is not a difference in recommendations but is important for comparing the recommendations of Coach Hughes to those of the ACSM.)
• Hughes suggests warmup and cool down for Zone 3 and above, ACSM for Zone 2 and above.

I have included a line on the figure at the top of the post illustrating one way of achieving the ACSM recommendations. To make it comparable, I have included the recommended warmup and cool down to the times. That said, it will be Coach Hughes recommendations I will be discussing for the remainder of the post.

When I looked at Coach Hughes' three plans, especially at the "Total Minutes" column, my first reaction is that the Vigorous schedule is almost certainly beyond my reach and even the Fit schedule might be a stretch. Next, I despair at implementing any of his plans in that they all involve doing rides at controlled Intensity: Recovery (Zone 1), Endurance (Zone 2), and Tempo (Zone 3.) I find it impossible to maintain a fixed Intensity on the hilly rides that are my only option here in California; inevitably my Intensity going up hills increases. I confronted this before when I wanted to convert the Hughes plan to prepare to ride a 200 Kilometer Brevet into a plan to prepare for a 100 Kilometer Metric Century. What I did was to replace the higher Intensity rides with additional minutes added to my mixed Intensity hilly rides with the idea that my higher Intensity on the hills of my medium Intensity Endurance rides would provide the same training, and that is what I did here as well. Instead of Endurance and Tempo rides, I have Mixed Intensity rides that include both. I have added a line to the figure at the top of the post illustrating a set of rides I might do here in Emerald Hills that add up to Hughes' Fit week and a second line illustrating a somewhat more modest schedule which is more like what I am doing today.

If I substitute my mixed intensity rides, especially now that I have moved into a more hilly part of California, does that work out to be the right amount of time in the different zones? Unfortunately not. In my post where I developed my schedule to ride a metric century a month, I initially calculated that they did. However, in my very next post I noted that Hughes' had different heart rate boundaries for his Intensity zones that the ones I had been using. It seemed most appropriate to use Hughes zones to follow a Hughes plan, and when I did that, I found that I had too much time in Zone 3 and too little in Zone 2. In the case of the Riding for Health plan I am attempting to replicate here, Hughes calls for roughly 20% of ride time in Zone 1, 70% in Zone 2, and 10% in Zone 3. When I substitute my mixed intensity rides, I end up with roughly 20% in Zone 1, 40% in Zone 2, and 40% in Zone 3. I will address possible solutions to this problem in future posts.

What is the purpose of having the three plans, Normal, Fit, and Vigorous? As is often the case with Coach Hughes, there are a multiplicity of purposes, he is nothing if not flexible. For example, one thing he suggests is the following: "These weeks could also correspond to different seasons. In the summer your cardio [aerobic exercise] could resemble the Vigorous week, in the spring and fall the Fit week, and in the winter the Normal week." However, another purposes is based on "the more the healthier." The following is summarized from his column:

• Unhealthy: Aging happens rapidly.
• Normal: Fitness declines normally.
• Fit: Fitness declines more slowly.
• Vigorous: Fitness declines very slowly.

In the "the more the healthier" approach, one should strive to be has high on this fitness hierarchy as possible. As always, Hughes suggests a progressive approach, working your way from a Normal to a Fit to a Vigorous exercise schedule. To tell which weekly plan to start with and when to graduate to the next level, Hughes uses a point system. You earn points by exercising for multiple years, by maintaining a schedule that accumulates a significant number of miles each year, and by completing one or more long rides each year. You get 1 point if you have been riding 1-2 years, 2 points for  3-5 years and 3 points for 6 or more years. I have been riding pretty continuously for 13 years so I get 3 points. For miles per year, the ranges are that less than 3,000 miles per year gets you 1 point, 3,000-3,500 miles per year gets you 2 points, and greater than 3,500 miles per year gets you 3 points. For some perspective, randonneurs^ are expected to ride at least 5,000 miles per year, and at my peak in 2013 I reached 5,571 miles per year and between 2013 and 2014 had 54 straight weeks where I was above 5,000 miles per year. I stayed above 4,000 miles per year until 2017 when my wife's cancer got worse and she needed more care. I was below 3,500 miles a year a month later and, with one brief exception, have not since been above that level since. I dropped below 3,000 miles per year near the end of 2021 and am currently at 2,532 miles/year so only get 1 point. Finally, there is the longest ride in a year with the kicker that it must be ridden at at least 12.5 miles per hour. Those who follow my blog know that, for me, that is a pretty fast ride. For comparison, in randonneuring, to qualify for a 200 kilometer brevet (124 miles) one only needs to ride it at just above 9 miles per hour. In 2018 and 2019 I rode metric centuries (62 miles) and I think in each case I managed to ride them faster than 12.5 miles per hour. However, I have not been able to ride Metric Centuries for the last two years  (mostly for reasons having nothing to do with my fitness.) The one ride over 50 miles I have done in the last year was done at 11.2 miles per hour so doesn't count. The three groups in this case are less than 50 miles gets 1 point, 50-100 miles gets 2 points and above 100 miles gets 3 points. Thus, technically I am in the less than 50 mile group and only get 1 point. This gives me a total of 5 points. To qualify to ride a Normal schedule requires 3-4 points, Fit requires 5-7 points, and Vigorous requires 8-9 points. This puts me into the Fit group.

What are my prospects for training myself into the Vigorous group with its promise of a longer, more fit life? At this point I am going to address a problem I see in this column by Hughes, the absence of any consideration of the effect of hills on riding speed. A hilly route is slower than a flat route. In the context of his recommended schedule, this is not a problem because his schedule is expressed in minutes instead of miles. One can spend an hour doing a short, hilly ride or an hour doing a long, flat ride and they are the same in terms of Coach Hughes' schedule. That is why I switched from tracking miles to tracking minutes when I moved from the flat geography of Texas to the hilly geography of California. When this becomes a problem is when Hughes switches back to using miles in his evaluation plan, total miles ridden in a year and miles per hour on the longest ride. Reaching 3,500 miles per year was much easier in Texas than it is here in California, and riding faster than 12.5 mile per hour is similarly so. I might be inspired to do something about that, revise these criteria, if I really felt I could handle Hughes' Vigorous schedule, but I don't so I won't.

Why do I believe I can't handle Hughes' Vigorous schedule? Based on my 13 years of riding as an old man I believe that how much I train is limited less by what I decide to do and more by what I am physically able to do. Bearing that in mind, let's work through what it would take to "qualify" for that schedule using Hughes' evaluation plan. Right now I have 5 points and would need 3 more to reach the 8 points needed to qualify for a Vigorous schedule. I am maxed out on years of riding so those 3 points would have to come from increases in both miles per year and longest ride ridden faster than 12.5 mph. On November 10 of 2019, I rode 65 miles at 13 mph which would have earned me 2 points in the longest ride category. I have had a mileage above 3,000 for the previous year from March of 2019 through September of 2021, but only had a mileage above 3,500 for three weeks in the middle of that. If I give myself 2 points for annual mileage, that gives me 7 points, still 1 below what is needed for the Vigorous category. Sure, it is not impossible I could push my annual mileage above 3,500 and sure, I feel like I'm being penalized for the hills in which I live, still, I think the most reasonable interpretation is that, according to Hughes' guidelines, I ought to be following his Fit schedule. That, combined with my intuition based on my experience says the Vigorous schedule is a level of training I could not sustain. I guess I just have to resign myself to dying young.

After all that, what did I learn from this column by Coach Hughes? First, for those of you who prefer their humor flagged, the last sentence of the previous paragraph is a joke. The ACSM recommends 150 to 300 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise (or half that of vigorous aerobic exercise) a week, and I am currently averaging significantly more than their upper recommendation. It is generally agreed that, with aerobic exercise, more is almost always better, but Coach Hughes' Vigorous schedule is completely arbitrary,  there is no strong argument for my trying to meet that level of exercise specifically. On the other hand, it is reassuring that the maximum amount of cycling I have come up with on my own and the amount that Hughes' guidelines suggest for me are essentially the same, it seems I have gotten fairly good at listening to my body. Finally, I was reassured that, based on this column by Coach Hughes, my long rides are not too long, my easy rides on the trainer are worth riding and I am doing about the right number of them, and that I am getting plenty of high Intensity riding. Good job, Zombie!