The vagaries of the heart

Admit it. You thought I was going to write some overwraught screed about love and the human condition. That makes one of us.

No, I've put my heart under a bit of scrutiny with this latest bout of training. About a year ago, with my 2007 REI dividend I bought a Polar RS200 heart rate monitor to tell me what my heart's doing while I destroy the rest of my body. Interesting stuff. There's this baseline test you're supposed to take with it, which I didn't do because I wanted to get at it. And I thought I knew everything. Maximum heart rate = 220-age. The manual says otherwise, that Polar's test is more accurate. And I'm wondering if that's the case.

For example, last night I hit the bike trainer for an hour-and-a-half, watching St. Croix Half-Iron 2005 and Ironman New Zealand 2005 (you'll get to know my VHS collection well if you stay with me for a while) while killing my hearing with another one of my self-labeled cool playlists. I don't think that has anything to do with what my heart does during the course of a workout, but at some point I'll investigate a possible cause-and-effect relationship. Moving forward...

The max heart rate was 157, and the average was 142. In fact, I've averaged 20 beats higher on any of my runs than any of my rides. At times I was working pretty hard last night. What I do is this: Keep it on the small ring with a high turnover while the race is going on, but shift into bigger gears when commercials come on, then back down when commercials end. Some shows have longer commercial breaks than others, but that's the nature of a real bike ride or the bike portion of a triathlon. Sometimes you've got to put the hammer down at unfamiliar intervals, which is what I try to do during these winter training sessions.

Now, I just had this thought that perhaps the scenery at Half Acre Gym, where I do my running, adds a few beats to my pulse. Not a chance. There's some nice scenery in these races I've taped , too, and I'm not talking about the sky-blue Caribbean waters of Christensted or the soaring mountains around Lake Taupo. Stuff like that doesn't get to me. I'm a pretty cool customer in such situations, so let's just eliminate this factor now.

Again, the question remains. Why is my heart rate that much higher when I run than when I ride? And will this continue to be the case when I move my training from my living room and Half Acre to the roads of Albany County?

Ah yeah, the playlist. My favorite part of this whole ordeal:

"Cochise," Audioslave
"Ignition," Brian Setzer's '68 Comeback Special
"Baton Rouge," The Nixons
"I Ain't Goin' Out Like That," Cypress Hill
"Click Click Boom," Saliva
"Mr. Brownstone," Guns n Roses
"Serpent Boy," (hed)pe
"Headspace," Velvet Revolver
"The Distance," Cake
"Feel Like I Wanna Feel," The Bella Fays
"Greater Than/Less Than," Saliva
"Roll Right," Rage Against the Machine
"A Song for Sassy Baxter," Hollywood Superstars
"Heart Attack Man," Beastie Boys
"Bring the Noise," Public Enemey
"Warped," Red Hot Chili Peppers
"Jimmy Olsen's Blues," Spin Doctors
"I Make My Own Rules," LL Cool J feat. Flea, Chad Smith and Dave Navarro
"I Come From the Water," The Toadies
"Business as Usual," Blues Traveler
"My Wave," Soundgarden
"The Only Way to Be," Save Ferris
"Can't Get Enough of You Baby," Smash Mouth