support script for heart-rate–triggered intervals i.e., “advance to next step when HR ≥ X bpm” in the same way Garmin Connect does.
I find this a good alternative to time based in a certain zone as it motivates me to either increase cadence to reach a HR target or work harder in a difficult zone.
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I frequently thought this would be a great feature, I didn’t even know it is supported by Garmin already.
It would be a great addition to intervals.icu I believe. One use I would see would be in intervals, instead of scheduling an arbitrary distance or time for recovery breaks, simply have it run until HR < Z1 bpm or something like that.
(Of course a prerequisite for making this actually usable for folks normally not training with HR, i.e. for those using power or pace, would be to make it possible to export laps with different metrics each - which is impossible for now in intervals.icu.)
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In Garmin you still set up the difficulty in watts or % if FTP as a secondary target, in other words something to work against to reach to reach the HR trigger to progress to the next interval or as suggested for recovery the secondary target maybe 50-75% of FTP and the HR trigger is for example HR dropping below x value, vase on your HR zones. Thus you’ll note that your recovery time needed is less in the beginning of intervals than towards the end. As my fitness improves the recovery time decreases for specific intervals and the difference between the shorter first recovery time and generally longer last recovery time decreases. While this is well known indicator of fitness and potentially very reliable and repeatable.
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I use the TrainerDay HR+ feature, which controls trainer power to keep HR close to a target. It works well.
I like the “trigger next interval based on reaching HR Xbpm” idea so much that I will mention it to TrainerDay to see if it is something they might be able to do something with.
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