Help find my target heart rate

It depends on what you are doing. There are several different heart rate zones. What heart rate zone you need to be in will depend on what you are trying to accomplish with each workout. You will also need to figure out what your heart rate zones are. This can be accomplished several different ways, the easiest way is by doing a 30 minute time trial.

The best thing you can do is pick up a copy of Mountain Bikers Training Bible by Joe Friel. It will teach you pretty much all you need to know about heart rate zone training.

Average HR from the last 20 minutes of an all out effort 30 minute time trial estimates your lactate threshold heart rate. You can then plug that number into a table (in Joe Friel's Training Bible book) to come up with five heart rate training zones. Training with your heart rate in each zone accomplishes a specific purpose.

Don't bother with generic heart rate guidelines based on your age. They are not accurate enough to be of use to 66% of the population.

Make sure you have been checked over by your Dr before you go and ride at max effort on your trainer for 30 minutes. It is a good workout for someone in shape but a disaster if you do not have the fitness to support it.

Lynda

Lynda, a much better way of saying what I was trying to say.

Also, just saw that you use training peaks. That is the same site my coach uses. Seems like a great program, makes everything very easy to understand.