How did you determine your max heart rate?

It would be really helpful to have some better metrics. %mhr is really useless for comparing berween sports. It's very common, especially with newer athletes to see a larger skew between running and cycling at the same relative effort. By relative effort I mean as a percentage of threshold heart rate. Threshold being average heart rate for a ~1hr max effort.

Its quite typical to see a cycling threshold that is 10 bpm lower than running.

That said there are some things in your post that sound inconsistent. First you say that on your road bike you recently did 2:25 at 160 bpm and suspect that you could have actually done a 5 more (let's say 3 is more realistic) for 163 bpm. In the very next paragraph you say that you can't get your hr over 155 bpm... And call this quad burning.

These two descriptions are in conflict.

This.

Different sports typically have different maxHR's - don't use maxHR's are one sport as the benchmark for another. Swiming is normally the lowest, then cycling, then running. The highest maxHR's are often seen in nordic skiers.

Looking at your stats, you are a stronger runner than cyclist - both pretty decent though. As a strong runner, It is normal for your heart rate at FTP to be lower than your running threshold. Reading between the lines, I also think that you may be focusing too much on high intensity: 16-18 hours is a lot of training, 80% should be zone 2 (below 140bpm) and 20% at high intensity (above 170bpm), try to avoid junk miles 145-165 bpm. If you are doing high intensity all the time you are just building fatigue, when you are tired you will really stuggle to get your heart rate up.

You probably don't want to hear this, however, there aren't any short cuts. It takes a few years to build base fitness to its peak, and that's when you will be the most successful at 70.3 and 140.6 distance races

It may seem really obvious, but the secret to a great race is to bike as fast as possible, using as little energy as possible. I can do a great time on the bike leg, at under 70% of my FTP, I then have plenty in the tank for a strong run. If I biked at 75% of my FTP I may save 5 mins on the bike, but will run 10 mins slower

I'm the same. My running tempo/interval HR 155-168 but cycling is 140-150... I use a power meter on the bike and don;t go by heart but do monitor HR on the bike. If i had to go by hr on the bike, I'd would say anthing over 140 is hard. Even then, other factors influence heart rate, such as temperature and hydration. Just go for 10-20 beats lower than run. Each sport has it's own heart rates as a previous poster mentioned.

This is quite common for runners coming into triathlon. I had a similar experience. It's very hard for me to get the heart rate over 170 on the bike. When I'm running, I can be 170-190 in workouts/races. The 10bpm tracks for me but I think it's also a leg strength issue. Biking has different demands. Have you done a workout to exhaustion on the bike. We're thinking about it as the heart rate not being able to get high enough but at some point the legs can't push above a certain heart rate. I also notice a small difference between indoor & outdoor riding. Easier to keep the heart rate down indoors.

I had a nearly identical progression to you in terms of hours/results. The good thing about having a low heart rate on the bike is that you can keep working hard and make improvements. I would try to mix up workouts & train like a cyclist. I was coaching myself for 3 years & trained the bike the same way I trained the run -- lots of volume & lots of comfortable long intervals (Z2/Z3). I got a coach last year & now most bike sessions have some quality to them. We did an intentional VO2 block where I was able to get into the 170s. We did a progression of workouts where I would do 3 x (2min hard + 9min sweet spot) w./ full rest. That workout doesn't seem like much but the 2min started at 365 watts & the 9min were at 300. We progressed to 3min @ 400 + the 9min @ 300. We've done workouts that I would have never written for myself because I like the longer reps around race pace. Lots of 20-40s bouts of sprinting. We did a series of FTP workouts building from 5min to 20min reps. When you're talking about struggling to get 4-5min reps up to a certain heart rate what power are you doing them at? Don't be afraid to do something like 12x5min w./ full (5min) rest instead of 2min rest. The mind is almost going to hold you back when you have 2min recoveries. 12x5 w./ 2min is how you would structure a running workout, with 40% rest time. But in the cycling workout it's probably going to be tough to work higher power with the short recoveries so you default to a power to get you through the workout, which gives you a nice looking heart rate. Before the coaching started up, I was always comfortable at sweet spot & down but I would sometimes struggle to hold the longer reps closer to FTP. Those are the reps the drive the heart rate up & now I can ride with a higher heart rate for those reps. My legs are stronger. Would also recommend some cadence change work. Low cadence reps to help build some of that leg strength.

I've found I get much more HR response in a race than during training on the bike. For me VO2 intervals max 5 minutes I might hit 163, yet I've held 163 previously as an average HR for a 90 min MTB xc race. Like most my run HR zones are higher, about 10-15 BPM.

You really should get a power meter to run in correlation to HR and RPE (but you probably know that). Big difference in HR response between carrying 18hrs/week training load and what you can hit in a race with a taper.

You just need time to build muscular endurance to match your aerobic system. Longer z1/z2 sessions on the bike will help with this. My threshold HRs pretty well match between all three sports now, but that wasn't the case early on in cycling. I bet a year from now with dedicated training on the bike you'll find your HR zones match closer with where you can get to while running.

Yeah noticed this as well. I'll add that it's possible you are overtrained a bit which will lower your max HR. HR values generally don't hit near max unless you're quite fresh. Also, as stated, HR is ok to look at if that's all you have, but you're probably just as well off, maybe better off, just using RPE. If your HR is 155 doing VO2's but you feel like you're breathing through your eye balls, then you're likely doing your VO2's correctly.

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Heath Dotson
HD Coaching:Website |Twitter: 140 Characters or Less|Facebook:Follow us on Facebook

If you are truly putting in that high level of training volume then you would greatly benefit from a power meter. I know this might not be what you want to hear for responses. Heart rate is good but having power to match with RPE can tell you if you are having a sluggish day or feeling great. When your heart rate won't elevate during a bike workout it can be due to fatigue/overtraining or it could also be that fitness is improving. That power meter + RPE is a valuable tool in your training kit.