Hi – it’s really great to see a forum for women here so please keep up the initiative. I am just rereading your book TFTUA (and have bought myself a lactate monitor and will be going out testing later this week to help me identify my specific thresholds). I was also wondering if there was any difference in zone breadth etc for women generally and if things like the 10% rule for ADS would also apply in the same way. Would you recommend any additional resources for women to research on this topic of HR zones?
A book that I read last year and have found to be really helpful for lots of women specific advice on endurance training is called “ROAR: How to match your food and fitness to your female physiology for optimum performance, great health and a strong, lean body for life”, by Dr Stacy T Simms.
She details that women have “about 30% less cardiac output than men” due to smaller heart, heart volume and lung volume. Also a lower VO2 max of about 15-25% on average even for trained athletes. For untrained people there is more overlap in VO2 max across the genders.
Another resource I’ve found is a free app called FITR woman, which is aimed at menstruating women to give advice on how to optimise training and nutrition through the menstrual cycle. It also explains how HR for women varies through the cycle.
Observationally, my husband and I are climbing and training partners and I have circa 10-15bpm higher HR than him during all exercise, whilst at rest we are about the same. It will be fun to work out what our thresholds are and how much time I accidentally spending doing my recovery workouts in zone 2! oops!
Thanks again for starting the female forum and also for all the other interesting information aimed at all of us,
Louise