[rydbyk]

Is it just me, or is there a big diff. here regarding leg pain/feeling of lack of oxygen?

Let me explain...

Holding 180 bpm solo for 7 minutes feels like my legs are going to fall off and I can barely talk.

vs.

Holding 180 bpm in a group for 7 minutes while drafting is way less agonizing.

I thought it was as simple as 180 bpm is 180 bpm.

Explain please..

 

[AlexRandall]

A lot of that will be perceived effort (which can be different to actual effort)...but also by yourself there is no 'wheel to hold'. This is why TT's are so hard. There is no rabbit to catch or rider to guage your effort against

 

[ZoSoSwiM]

Motivation.


By yourself you have nothing else to think about besides your suffering.
With a group you're distracted and motivated to work hard to stay with the group or pass them.

RPE and the Borg scale explains that.

 

[rydbyk]

A lot of that will be perceived effort (which can be different to actual effort)...but also by yourself there is no 'wheel to hold'. This is why TT's are so hard. There is no rabbit to catch or rider to guage your effort against

I don't know...I can really tell a difference between the two...both being 180 bpm.

 

[chase196126]

It could be the way you are hitting that 180 BPM that differs from a group situation to a solo effort.

In the group you might be accelerating and slowing down constantly, where when you are solo you could be doing a steady effort.

You could be using a different cadence to stay with the group and allow for acceleration where you are using a larger gear during your solo effort.

You could be more excited/nervous when in the group. When I was still using heart rate to train I found that whenever I was a little amped up in a race or group ride my RPE would be at a much lower point than HR would indicate. A little adrenaline can do a lot.

Those are a few ideas that come from my experiences with HR

 

[rydbyk]

It could be the way you are hitting that 180 BPM that differs from a group situation to a solo effort.

In the group you might be accelerating and slowing down constantly, where when you are solo you could be doing a steady effort.

You could be using a different cadence to stay with the group and allow for acceleration where you are using a larger gear during your solo effort.

You could be more excited/nervous when in the group. When I was still using heart rate to train I found that whenever I was a little amped up in a race or group ride my RPE would be at a much lower point than HR would indicate. A little adrenaline can do a lot.

Those are a few ideas that come from my experiences with HR

Yeh...I think the adrenaline may be raising my HR a bit...still, shouldn't the lactic build up still hurt equally the same as solo effort?

I am not so much asking why my HR goes up in a group...more about why it feels diff. on the body?

Holding 180 bpm solo for 7 minutes feels like my legs are going to fall off and I can barely talk.

vs.

Holding 180 bpm in a group for 7 minutes while drafting is way less agonizing.

Both are 180 bpm for 7 minutes, but they feel different on the body...

 

[chase196126]

It is most likely from the adrenaline raising your heart rate while your power is staying the same. Heart rate does not correlate exactly with power day to day.

For example:

On your solo day you may have been at 350 watts (number used for example purposes only) and 180 BPM

On the group ride day you were excited so your HR was elevated from where it would generally be for a given wattage range. You may only have been doing 335-340 watts with the same HR, so your RPE would be lower because you were not working as hard.

 

[muscleendurance]

it would depend on how many women were in the group :lol:

 

[Undecided]

Yeh...I think the adrenaline may be raising my HR a bit...still, shouldn't the lactic build up still hurt equally the same as solo effort?

I am not so much asking why my HR goes up in a group...more about why it feels diff. on the body?

Holding 180 bpm solo for 7 minutes feels like my legs are going to fall off and I can barely talk.

vs.

Holding 180 bpm in a group for 7 minutes while drafting is way less agonizing.

Both are 180 bpm for 7 minutes, but they feel different on the body...

I've just looked at some of my power files to see how different (by power) two seven-minute efforts of similar HR can be. I found two spans of seven minutes with an average of 175 bpm in very different contexts.

One was the last 7 minutes of a solo climb, averaging a very steady 5.2 watts/kilo (NP almost exactly the same) for that 7 minutes, HR fluctuating over a couple of beats after having climbed to that level gradually over the 11 minutes preceding that 7 minute stretch.

The other was a 7 minute span of a crit, with heart rate fluctuating over a few more beats, but still fairly steady. Average power was a much lower 3.63 watts/kilo, but NP was 4.70 w/kg, as power fluctuated a lot more. It was a heavy-foot-on-the-gas course, coasting an off-camber corner 1/3 of the way up a short climb, then a quick blip to 13-15 watts/kilo getting back on the gas, holding 7-8 watts/kilo up the rest of the climb, easing off for several seconds on a flat, coasting a hairpin, quickly hitting 8-12 watts/kilo coming out of the turn into a descent, cruising for several seconds, easy pedaling through a turn, then getting back on it at 8-11 w/kilo out of the turn and up the first 1/3 of the short climb.

Those are fairly extreme examples, but with very similar HR numbers, I made about 40% more power on the segment of the longer solo climb than I did in the segment of the crit, and the solo climb came after about 11 minutes of only slightly easier effort (at 5.06 w/kg). Any other seven minute stretch of the crit looked about the same as the one I picked. The climbing segment was just about as uncomfortable as it could have been. The crit was not (although it had its moments). The HR is comparable. The power is not.

I know these are extreme examples, but for me, I think HR lags too much to really correlate with my perception of my discomfort, and erratic power output that includes resting moments goes a long way toward alleviating my discomfort before it necessarily drives down my HR.