One of my athletes recently completed an intense season, including two 70.3s, a full IM, and finishing the season with a PR marathon at Berlin of 3:07. He recently voiced concern about a high exercise heart rate during the transition period, which is a potential sign of overtraining. Below is my reply.

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I wanted to followup on your comment about your high HR, and check to see how much of a concern this is. The first below chart is your run HR from the Berlin marathon through today, the second chart below is your run HR from April 1 to Berlin (I chose to compare run to run HR, we could have also compared bike to bike, it would have been similar).

- Since Berlin, you have spent 46% of your time in a HR above 145, compared to 63% above 145 from the previous 6 months (April through Berlin).
- Your largest HR distribution for the last month has been 145-150 compared to 155-160 for the previous 6.
- The next 2 charts are the same comparison of April to Berlin and Berlin until today. These charts compare average HR to average highest 20-minute pace in kph. I see here that the ratio of HR to speed also stayed level since Berlin. Note that there are some erroneous outliers in terms of speed where a bike workout was labeled as a run, but otherwise the charts show a similar HR to speed ratio.

These three items would indicate your HR is at or below intensities you experienced in training and racing, and therefore not a issue for concern.

However, there are two other items to take into consideration:
- There is a notable spike in HR over the last month in the 160-165 range. Although it is less of a % then during the training season, it is proportionally higher than is was over the regular season compared to other HR ranges. I don’t know that this is “bad” but it is certainly “different” and enough to justify a change.
- Frankly, your general observation of higher HR and feel that something is amiss is more important than any other consideration or data. This alone is enough to modify training for a few more weeks.

Therefore, I suggest that overall, we keep the intensity very low, volume fairly low, with only brief bursts of speed less than 30 seconds at around 5k race pace for the run, and 30 seconds at FTP for the bike. I think we should keep this up for the next 2-3 weeks, and your proposed training schedule in TP.com will reflect this. Anything I assign you over the next two weeks is recommended, please feel free to reduce or skip some items. We have moved from the Transition phase to the Prep phase, and there is still quite a bit of flexibility here until the Base phase begins.

HR Distribution After Berlin Marathon	HR Distribution Before Berlin Marathon
HR to Speed Ratio After Berlin	HR to Speed Ratio Before Berlin