u/pinkiluna

Hi, ive just had my 3rd race and i am looking at my HR stats and wondering whether i have my hr zones incorrectly set or just went too hard. (Using polar h10)

Race profile was 48km and 1200m and took me around 2:40~ to finish. Weather was avarage 37°C and on direct sun garmin edge showed me 50C.

Now to the zones, apparently i was 48 min in Z5 and 1.04 in Z4. I started cramping around 30km and had to walk for 500m and had to slow down from then on. I felt ok breathing/energy wise but when i tried to push harder uphill i cramped.

The way i set zones was doing all out effort for 1 hour, take last 45 min and avarage them. That gave lthr2 of 168bpm i added 3 bpm and put 171 as my top Z4. Did this a month ago and till now it seemed accurate, rarely hitting z5 mostly in z2/3 and z4 felt like hard effort.

Should i recalculate them ?

Thanks in advance

As the title says is there any reasonably priced rack thats safe for carbon ? Or what are you using to transport the bikes safely.

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Bikes wont fit inside the car as i plan to carry atleast 2 upto 3.

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Thanks in advance.

Hey, as the title suggests I’ve been struggling a lot with hunger and fatigue to the point where I pretty much go to sleep at 6 or 7pm and feel constantly hungry.

I’m relatively new to cycling, only riding since 2024/2025. This year, starting in mid-March, I increased my volume to around 200 km and 4000 m of climbing per week. Over the last two weeks I’ve ended up doing 320+ km with 6000 m climbing each week. Currently sitting at 4000km and 40k m since January.

Most of this is done on a full suspension XC bike, with once or twice a week Z1/Z2 gravel rides of around 60 km.

My fueling strategy seemed to work until recently. usually bringing around 60 g of carbs mixed with water, plus 1 banana and a gel on rides.

However, over the last week or so my legs feel completely dead. On XC rides I can’t get out of Z2, and on gravel my HR barely even reaches Z1 effort.

At the same time, my weight seems to be going up, not down, even though I’m constantly hungry and sometimes wake up at night due to hunger. In March I was 181 cm and 77 kg, and now I’m around 80 kg.

This is especially confusing to me because I’m very strict with calorie tracking due to the fact I lost around 50 kg since 2022.

Is all of this expected, what should be my course of action and how to prevent it from happening again? Should i take a break or just lower volume with more fuel ?

Thanks in advance.