6 signs your riding is harder on your heart than you think (and being fit is hiding it)
Last spring a man from my club, fitter than me and two years younger, was told after a scan that his heart wasn’t in the shape his legs were.
Low resting heart rate. More riding than anyone he knew. A doctor who’d said for years that he was in great shape.
Once I started asking, I found the same story everywhere cyclists over 40 talk about their hearts. One, on r/Garmin, after an ablation:
“Turns out I was in constant AFib and could’ve dropped dead at anytime over 2 years and had no idea. Thought I was doing great with my heart health.”
u/Burnt_Phoenix22 · r/GarminNobody in those stories was unfit. What they had in common was a heart doing more than anyone knew, for longer than anyone noticed. These are the six signs I now check in myself. If three or more of them are you, read to the end, or jump to what fixes it.
- 1.Fit isn’t the same as safe. My clubmate found that out the hard way.
- 2.The risk isn’t the hours. It’s hard days with no recovery planned between them.
- 3.The six signs I now check in myself are below.
Most of your rides end up hard
Long climbs, threshold efforts, the fast group ride. Easy days turn into tempo.
Study · MARC-2, Circulation 2023“It wasn’t total volume that raised the risk. It was the share of training at very high intensity.”
MARC-2 study of 289 endurance athletes, six-year follow-upMost cyclists over 40 don’t ride too much. We ride too hard, too often. The easy day becomes tempo, the group ride becomes a race, and the week never has a real rest in it. Years of that is the pattern researchers look for when a fit cyclist’s heart starts to change.
Your heart rate is higher than the watts
Same power, higher heart rate, and it’s been going on for weeks.
Cyclist post · r/Velo, August 2026“The ‘HR higher than the watts’ thing has me a little freaked out.”
u/Wonderful_Log_378, “What’s wrong with me?”He’d been short of breath for five weeks, with his heart rate in the 150s for easy power and his 15-minute power down 10%. He booked a cardiologist, which is the right call. The bigger problem: nothing he owned had set that trend against his training until it was this far along.
Your resting heart rate has crept up
A few beats higher than it was, and you can’t say why.
Cyclist post · r/Garmin, January 2026“My resting heart rate has increased by a little over 10 bpm, and my stress is high.”
u/mckennanoon, “garmin vitals going out of whack”A rising resting heart rate is one of the plainest signs your body is carrying more than it’s recovering from: a hard block, short sleep, stress at work, an illness on the way. On its own it doesn’t tell you which. Set against your training, your sleep and what you ate, it does, and the plan can back off before the week does it for you.
You ride when you’re run-down
A cold, a bad week, four hours’ sleep. You ride anyway.
Cyclist post · r/Velo, August 2026“I had a friend get some mild myocarditis from a virus, and his symptoms were very similar.”
u/Henry_Darcy, reply on “What’s wrong with me?”Most of us know the habit: training through a cold, riding dehydrated, pushing on a day we know we shouldn’t. It isn’t bad luck. It’s behaviour, and a plan that never knows you’re ill makes it the default.
Your last full week off was months ago
Rest days happen when life forces them. Recovery is whatever’s left.
Asked when he last took a week off the bike, one r/Velo cyclist answered: “Last full week off was after CX season which ended in December.” It was August. Recovery isn’t a reward for a big block. It’s where the work turns into fitness, and after 20 years of hard riding it’s the part you can’t skip.
You’ve never had your heart checked
You’re fit, so why would you? Then a mate mentions his.
My clubmate hadn’t either. Nor had the cyclist on r/Garmin who spent two years in AFib without knowing. If you’ve ridden hard for years, a check with your doctor comes first. What you can change yourself is the load you put on your heart every week, your nutrition, your sleep and your strain.
To be clear, the riding itself is good for your heart:
263,450 UK adults: people who cycled to work, against people who didn’t.
Celis-Morales et al. · BMJ · 2017 · observational, a link not proofAdults given treadmill fitness tests: the fittest against the least fit.
Mandsager et al. · JAMA Netw Open · 2018 · general populationSo the answer isn’t to ride less. It’s the four things around the riding that nobody looks at together.
What your heart carries comes from four places, and nothing you own looks at all four together
Look at the six again. Every one of them is one of four things going wrong with nothing noticing: the load you put on your heart, the strain you carry, the sleep you get and the food you eat.
Sleep and strain only count if something is on you every night and all day.
Three weeks of nights. A filled square is a night that was tracked.
So the answer isn’t another device for one of the four. It’s all four on one plan: something you wear every night and all day for your sleep and your strain, a plan that sets your training and your food, and an AI coach that watches all four at once.
HELIOS 2.0 + THRIVE: all four watched together, and a plan that changes with them
Read the six again: the rides that always end up hard, the heart rate above the watts, the resting heart rate creeping up, the rides you did while ill, the week off you never took, the check you never had. None of them means you should stop riding. Each one is a piece of the four going unwatched.
HELIOS 2.0 is the only setup I’ve tested that watches all four together. The ring is 2.1 g of titanium and 2.0 mm thin, with 7–10 days a charge and 3–4 weeks more in its travel charger, so it stays on every night and all day: that’s your sleep and your strain, measured. The THRIVE app sets your training load, with the hard days capped and real easy days between them, and sets every day’s food to that day’s training, counted in your recovery. MARCO, the AI coach in the app, watches all four at once, changes the plan when one of them moves, and explains every change. It isn’t a medical device and doesn’t diagnose anything.
“In 2026 there was no product on the market that could see every necessary data point, tie it all together, and give you one consolidated feedback loop. So we built one.”The people behind THRIVE
✓ 30-day money-back trial · 90-day results guarantee · Free shipping
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What it does when all four pile up in one week
This is the part a spec sheet can’t show you, so here it is on the real app screens, start to finish.
Three hard days in four, two long workdays, three short nights, and the hardest day eaten on too little food. You feel fine. On its own, none of the four looks like much.
An example week. Red is where it starts to cost you.
Recovery 45 · rest required · all four namedRecovery 45, rest required. MARCO names all four: three hard days in four, strain high on two workdays, sleep under baseline with HRV down four days running, and the hardest day under-fuelled. The week is reworked, training, food and bedtime, ready for you to accept.
THRIVE brief for the example week
Session skipped · next one eased · tempo movedAccept it, or ask MARCO about it, and the change is made in front of you: today’s spin is skipped, the next hard session is eased and the tempo work moves a day, so the week still builds without digging a hole.
Real THRIVE screen
Food timed to the session · sleep protectedFuelling is timed to the new session, protein within the hour after it, the last meal three hours before bed for cleaner overnight HRV, and a caffeine cutoff to protect your sleep.
Real THRIVE screenThat’s signs 1 and 4, the stacked hard days and riding run-down, caught on day five instead of week five. No number left for you to work out. The plan changed, and the reason came with it.
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What every heart-health setup over 40 should do
| Training app | Watch | HELIOS 2.0 + THRIVE | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Training load: hard days capped across the week | ✓ | suggestions | ✓ |
| Strain: tracked day and night | — | if worn | ✓ |
| Sleep: tracked every night | — | about 1 night in 3 | ✓ |
| Nutrition: set to each day and counted in recovery | — | — | ✓ |
| All four on one plan, changing together | — | — | ✓ |
| An AI coach watching all four | — | — | ✓ |
They sell devices. A bike computer is sold on the ride, a watch on the wrist, a training app on its workout library. None of them is paid to plan your whole week, so none of them does. THRIVE was built the other way round: the plan first, and one ring to keep it up to date.
“MARCO flagged ‘three days of suppressed HRV and elevated resting HR — recommend two days easy’. I ignored him, did the threshold workout, blew up. Now I listen.”
Camille Dufort · Verified buyerCoaches, cyclists and clinicians
Nutritionist’s viewOliver, sports nutritionist10 years with endurance athletes▶ Watch Oliver’s video
Nutritionist’s viewLina SorensenSports nutritionist and endurance fuelling coach“Riders over 40 recover slower, and most plans ignore it. Seeing sleep and HRV each morning lets them fuel and rest for the body they have.”
“MARCO kept me from blowing up at the wrong moment three different times across 28 hours of riding. Fueling reminders alone earned the subscription.”
Henrik Sørensen · Verified buyer“I have sensitive skin and a chest strap was hell on every long ride. This replaces it and the readings are within 1-3bpm of my old strap on intervals.”
David Chen · Verified buyer“The sleep insights and the gentle prompts about caffeine timing have changed my evenings. I sleep 40 minutes more on average.”
Mei Tanaka · Verified buyerThe world’s thinnest, lightest, slimmest smart ring. Beautiful, and made to be worn 24/7 for every occasion.
The world’s slimmest and lightest smart ring: 2.0 mm thin, 6.5 mm wide and 2.1 g of matt black titanium, so it stays comfortable on the bike, at work and asleep. It fits under cycling gloves.
It comes off because it’s bulky in bed or on the bars, or because it needs charging, so whole nights and days go missing.
Typically pretty ugly, and not something you wear to work or to dinner, so it comes off and the gaps start again.
Thin and light enough to sleep and ride in, beautiful enough for work and dinner, and 7–10 days a charge, with 3–4 weeks more in the travel charger. It stays on.
“Stupid as it sounds, this is the first wearable I haven’t taken off in 6 weeks. No bulk, sits flat under my work glove, charges in 45 min.”
Owen Bartlett · Verified buyer✓ 30-day money-back trial · 90-day results guarantee · Free shipping
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How many more seasons will you ride hard on a heart nobody is watching?
The Saturday ride at 80
Ask cyclists over 40 what they want from the next 30 years and nobody names a number. They want to still be on the Saturday ride at 80, on the wheel up the climb everyone races. A week in the mountains at 65 without a second thought. Riding with their kids when the kids are finally fast enough to drop them, and not letting them.
That’s what the hard days are for. Trained, fed, slept on and watched, they build those years. Left to chance, season after season, they’re what puts them at risk.
Here’s what the setup most of us run costs. Each piece sees one of the four at most, and none of them sees them together.
US list prices, checked August 2026.
HELIOS 2.0 with travel charger + the THRIVE app
For readers of this article: your 90-day guarantee is set on your heart numbers, not your watts.
- HELIOS 2.0 titanium ring + travel charger2.1 g, 7–10 days a charge, 3–4 weeks more in the charger
- Sleep, tracked every nightResting heart rate, HRV, skin temperature and blood oxygen while you sleep
- Strain, tracked day and nightEvery ride, every workday, every stress
- Every day’s food set to your trainingCalories, carbs and protein, counted in your recovery
- A training plan that caps your hard daysReal easy days and strength, in phases
- MARCO, the AI coach watching all fourExplains every change, and moves the plan when you ask
- Your 90-day heart targetSet with our team after your first week of nights
Stock is limited: 100 HELIOS 2.0 rings this month
Get HELIOS 2.0 →✓ 30-day money-back trial · 90-day results guarantee · Free shipping
Try it for 30 days. Get results in 90, or your money back.
Wear it for 30 nights. Not for you? Send it back for a full refund.
Your target is set on your heart, with our team, after your first week of nights: for example, resting heart rate back at or under your own baseline by day 90. Miss it and we refund you in full.
Plus a 2-year warranty, free shipping and a free sizing kit before you commit.
Before you buy
Do I need this if my heart feels fine?
Feeling fine is exactly when most of us stop paying attention. THRIVE plans your hard days, food and recovery so the load stays where it should, and HELIOS 2.0 tracks your trend every night. If you have symptoms, see a doctor first.
Is HELIOS 2.0 a medical device?
No. It doesn’t diagnose anything. It tracks your resting heart rate, HRV, sleep, blood oxygen and skin temperature every night, and THRIVE uses that to plan your training, food and recovery.
Is it worth it?
Add up what you run now: a bike computer, a watch, a training app, a food app, maybe a coach. Each one covers one part. This covers all four, with a 30-day money-back trial.
Will it stop me riding hard?
No. It caps the hard days and makes the easy days real, so the hard days you do ride land properly.
So you’ve got two options
Keep riding hard and hope your fitness is protecting your heart.
Put your training, food and recovery on one plan, tracked every night, with 30 days to send it back.
✓ 30-day money-back trial · 90-day results guarantee · Free shipping
Stock is limited: 100 HELIOS 2.0 rings this month