Breath, tiring muscle and heart rate

[Henley 1]

ChrisF, have a look at this. It relates to your issue with the high HR and burn shortly after start. Unfortunately races all start rather fast as the guys scramble for position/bunches

https://www.runnersworld.com/training/a20859327/why-cant-i-run-faster/?source=nl&utm_source=nl_rnw&utm_medium=email&date=062519&src=nl&utm_campaign=17240432&tpcc=email_offer

[buckstopper]

My advice to cycling newbies on the question of gear selection is to find the balance between legs and lungs. Too slow(high gear), hr low but legs sore. Cadence too high, heart rate goes up, but easy on the legs. Maybe try your natural cadence +10rpm for the first 2 minutes and when your legs are warm, drop a gear or 2 into your natural leg/lung balance.

[buckstopper]

I also find that in a race initially, my heart rate can be high, which I believe is due to adrenaline. I can be on the startline at 120bpm. Been known to average 93% hrmax for a 2 hour race.

[Butterbean]

May seem out of left field, but I experienced legs okay but out of breath quite a lot when starting out.

 

Until I discovered I have exercise induced asthma. I now have legs giving up before breath, and that's the way it should be when you're fit, I think...

 

Candence also plays a massive part. I change things up based on how I'm doing. Legs feeling bad but not out of breath? Up the cadence. You take the strain of the muscles and onto the cardio.

 

Breath running out but legs okay? Give the lungs a rest while you drop the cadence and let your legs do more work.

 

Ideal is to have them both balanced at the same time, but that's lots of practice and paying attention to it.

 

Racing everything goes out the window when you're trying to stick with a group... Even with a Power Meter I can't afford to look at numbers when sussing out a bunch, so it comes from familiarity with effort, and what is sustainable, and what is not.

 

Play with the gears and cadence. Do some cadence training exercises. Good luck man.

[Roy Davis]

Sitting and spinning vs high impact moving your body through space. Two very different things. 

I can't verify this but conventional wisdom is that, if your legs pack up before your lungs, you are in too high a gear. And if you lungs pack up first you are in too low a gear.

[Roy Davis]

When racing/training endurance sport such as running or cycling, we observe 3 limiting elements: faster breath, tiring leg muscles, faster heart rate.

These vary in intensity relative to one another. Example: I find that during an easy session on the IDT my HR would still be relatively low while legs are already tiring, with breath rate quite active. However, on an equally easy run HR would be somewhat high while legs are still feeling fine and breathing rate quite low.

What do we derive from this?

Experts say that, if your legs get tired but your breathing is fine, you are in too high  a gear. If you are out of breath but your legs are fine you are in too low a gear

 No idea if this is right but it may give you a few ideas.

[Roy Davis]

Sitting and spinning vs high impact moving your body through space. Two very different things. 

Don't know if my previous post was posted so I will repeat it.

Experts say that, if your legs get tired but your breathing is fine you are in too high a gear. If you are out of breath but your legs are fine then you are in too low a gear. No idea if this is correct or not.