Max Heart Rate

I had a six month follow up wiith my cardiologist this week.  Everything looks great.  When I first saw him back in October, I had asked about max heart rate.  The charts show I should stay within 80-90% of 168 which is 220 minus my age.  I was regularly exceeding that and felt fine.  He told me then that I could go to 165 with no problems.

This week, I asked again about max heart rate.  I told him that I could average 155 and have hit a max of 180.  He commented that those are certainly elevated numbers but as long as I felt ok with no palpatations or tightness that I would be fine.  He said the body will tell you what is too much.

Just wanted to share share my observations that what you read in those charts is not exactly accurate for each person.  They are more guidelines than hard fast rules.  As the cliche goes, your mileage my vary.   If you have any issue see a cardiologist. 

My reasons for seeing one were I had been very obese for so long and there is a long history of heart disease in my family.  My brother who is 11 years older than I am had a triple bypass at age 58 and he was never as over weight as I was.  My dad had a quadruple bypass at age 68 and my mom had a triple bypass at age 77.

So the charts are like BMI  utter crap and can't be applied to an individual.  Max HR is unique to everyone.  My Max HR is 182 and I have to bust my ass to hit it, on the other hand when my wife began running her AVG HR on an easy run would be 195.  I have another friend whose comfortable Half Marathon pace was 212 and she actually ran a race with medical grade HR monitor and her cardiologist and nothing out of the normal.  On the other hand I have a friend who runs a sub 3 marathon with a heart rate less than 150.

What does all this mean?  Well you Max HR and your HR zones are unique to each person and as you get more fit and your body adapts to running, cycling whatever it is you are doing these zones will change.

Best thing is to train by HR go someplace and get a HR Zone or a VO2 max test done, and they will establish your HR.  if not you can try a self test if your have a good hr monitor.  I can find the protocol but it is something like a 10 minute warm up run and then 20 minutes as hard as you can and sustain the effort for 20 minutes, the avg of your HR during this 20 minutes becomes you LT or Lactic Threshold you can the somewhat calculate your zones based on percentages of your LT.  

Test is best and if you have a garmin and get one of a couple types of tests they can load your Zones and Caloric burns and various heart rates to get a more accurate output of your caloric burn.