HR skyrockets at race start

Making great progress on nutrition/weight loss and consistency/sweet spot. Have done two beginner xc races and noticed that my HR shoots up to max and stays there for a long while. Is this a function of not warming up adequately or needing more base fitness or something else? Thanks!

It could be a few things:

-adrenaline
-a very fast/hard start
-mediocre warm up

most bike races, especially XC races, are extremely hard at the start. You have to get off the line to be in good position!

what do your warm ups look like? It is best to go the line as hot as possible so you can handle the hard and fast starts!

-Coach Allie

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In both cases, i pre rode but then spent a lot of time in staging and felt cold. Is there a CX/xc warm up protocol? Thanks!

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I believe the CX warm up protocol is in our CX race n recover plan + we have a training tip on the subject too

Here ya go @evollmuth

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