Murray's heart rate

[1984]

Hey all, when Eric Murray broke the world record for one hour on the erg, after 10 minutes his heart rate was over 190 and it peaked at 201. 50 minutes at heart rate 190+ would absolutely kill me.

Obviously this guy is an olympic rower but I thought that he would just be more efficient for a given heart rate. Is working at such a high intensity for so long a mental thing or does the ability to hold a high heart rate for longer simply come with training?

[PDYFlyfish]

The cardiac cycle is divided into two phases. The first is diastole. During this phase a few things happen. The atria (smaller chambers) contract and fill the relaxing ventricle (larger chamber) with blood. And blood flows through the coronary arteries supplying the myocardium (heart muscle) with oxygen during diastole. During systole the ventricle contracts thus pumping blood to the vital organs.

Diastolic relaxation is longer than systole and is an active process requiring oxygen.

With fast heart rates there is less time for the ventricles to fill and less time for the muscle to be supplied with blood so there is a point where the cardiac output (amount of blood pumped by the heart every minute) decreases as the heart rate increases. The maximum heart rate gets lower with increasing age.

This guy can maintain a high cardiac output because of his youth and conditioning. There is very little that is purely mental. I hope this helps.

[hjs]

Hey all, when Eric Murray broke the world record for one hour on the erg, after 10 minutes his heart rate was over 190 and it peaked at 201. 50 minutes at heart rate 190+ would absolutely kill me.

Obviously this guy is an olympic rower but I thought that he would just be more efficient for a given heart rate. Is working at such a high intensity for so long a mental thing or does the ability to hold a high heart rate for longer simply come with training?

The fitter one is, the higher you can keep your hf.
Its also relative, if you don,t know his rate, that 190 says not much. Although given his max was 201, that must be close. Shows whst talent and hard work can do

[1984]

This guy can maintain a high cardiac output because of his youth and conditioning.

I'm 17 and today I did 40 minutes at average 183bpm peaking at 202, and that was pretty hellish.
So I think the rest is definitely conditioning.

[efagerho]

I've done workouts about an hour long averaging HRs in the 190s. Today I did my first ever 2K on the rower and had an average HR of 203. I'm 31yo. To me that HR sounds completely reasonable. I'm pretty sure it must have felt awful though.