#Use goldencheetah to view heartrate software

Effectively the heart doesn’t “know” what the rest of you is doing, it only gets signals from the Sinus Node telling it when to beat and a few physical signals such as venous return which affect its output. I coerced my surgeon to give me an MRI scan to check this out, and happily they found no change or problems in my heart.

Zwift gave Will a nice and controlled environment to train. This can cause problems if the heart muscle gets too big, as, much like a balloon, if stretched too far the muscle walls become thin and can lose elasticity and their ability to pump effectively. I was a little worried that my improved performance was down to an enlargement of my heart, which is normal in athletes and gives a bigger stroke volume and so a bigger cardiac output. However, heart rate is not the only factor in cardiac output (the amount of blood pumped in a minute), stroke volume (the amount of blood pumped with each beat) increases up to 2.5 times during maximal exercise, so I’m certainly missing out on some blood flow in that department. Maybe there is something in this made up unit of measurement, or maybe it’s just a complete coincidence! This shows my efficiency improving and seemingly plateauing, and remarkably my plateau figure is remarkably close to my pre-op PB figure of 2.31 w/b. Looking at my never popular watts per beat (Watts/Avg Hr) figures I go from 1.93 w/b in August 2016, then 2.09, 2.39 & finally 2.32 watts per beat in August 2017. At a glance it looks like a nice slow progression, with my power improving in line with my increasing heart rate. This is still a little way off my best of 22:04 at 363(estimated) watts & 157bpm, but an improvement that meant that I could climb Ventoux in June 2017 with an average power of 238 watts for 2 hours & an average HR of 107bpm.

Looking at my figures & estimated power up my “testing” climb to Gourdon ( 8k at 4% avg), they go like this (watts figures are Strava estimates): As I kept pushing away my heart response gradually improved a little, training whatever functionality I had to react more quickly and to make my heart beat slightly quicker. My first rides were painfully slow, maxing out at 180 watts and mid 80’s bpm – a resting heart rate and resting heart rate performance to match. Will wasn't able to go 'full pain cave' due to a cardiovascular condition. It was while starting out on the road to recover and wondering if I’d ever be able to do anything “physical” again that the turbo and those little numbers, initially pathetic, but slowly ticking higher each week took on a much greater significance for me. I was, I did, but only just, and it was every bit as painful as it sounds. He probably wouldn’t have thought I’d be out a few weeks after my last op searching for the steepest bits of road I could and be dragging my 110kg carcass up them, trying to bludgeon my heart rate above 100bpm. Post-op my surgeon said I could push as hard as I wanted to, to try and drive my heart rate up into a normal zone, I don’t think he understood the sporting mentality, not many people in the “normal” medical world do. Luckily, where I live is perfect for cycling, it rarely rains and even if it does it’s still warm and lovely, so the turbo is for when work or other commitments restrict my cycling time.

#Use goldencheetah to view heartrate software

I had a turbo trainer set up at home that connected to my computer and I’d found the free software Golden Cheetah that could record & analyse my indoor sessions on Sufferfest, but this was for emergencies only. I used to time myself with a stopwatch on climbs and loved beating my previous bests, before Strava came and took it to a new level. I loved going as hard as I could for a climb, straight piece of road, or other random landmarks that would serve as a suitable finish line. Prior to my little heart problem, subsequent operations and resulting complications, I’d never really bothered with my power figures. From the hundreds of messages that I haven’t received, I know you’re all wondering how I could possibly top that, well here’s how. When I last wrote a piece for this blog, 9 months ago, I’d just managed to climb Ventoux in a respectable time, claim a dubious cardiac efficiency victory over Laurens Ten Dam, and had started to dip my toe deeper into the uber geeky world of cycling power figures.