Triathlon Heart Rate

Heart Rate Monitors and Triathlon Training

There are some very sophisticated heart rate monitors on the market these days, ranging from the computer downloadable, multi buttoned types, or the plain old read out & nothing else job - which is what we use.

Now you might say I'm a cheapskate but let's face it, you don't need a nice graph on a computer screen to tell you what you should already know. But hey, if you've got the extra $1000, then go for it!

No matter what kind of monitor you've got, you've got to know how to use it effectively. I'm not going to go into every minute detail of using the heart rate monitor as it isn't the only way of monitoring your progress and in a perfect world the best way to go would probably be to use a heart rate monitor and a lactate tester, as heart rate at times can be misleading. But used with common sense, the monitor can be a very valuable training tool.

Let's use long course to Ironman triathlon for instance. These races are predominantly raced at aerobic heart rates, which will burn a greater percentage of fat. Swimming is the exception, which is actually done at substantially higher rates i.e. at or slightly above anaerobic threshold.

When we think about how much time to spend in each heart rate training zone we should look at the type of race we are training for - long distance to Ironman triathlon in this case. The aerobic system must be built up and then trained for this type of racing. The volume of training in each heart rate zone should look something like this:

70-75% of mileage at low to moderate intensity, training below aerobic threshold
20-25% at aerobic maximum to low anaerobic threshold, long intervals, Ironman triathlon race pace training bricks and the like.
5-10% at high intensity, hard intervals, speed work at or slightly above anaerobic threshold.

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