Finding you actual own HR rather than 220 - age

[Grannyhugs]

Just found this article to help find your own max HR. polar.com/blog/calculate-ma... makes sense for all of us that have been running at 110% which of course is not achievable. Doing the reverse maths then, just because I love numbers, I have the heart of a 33 year old ha ha. Not bad at 57.

[UnfitNoMore Graduate10]

Great results... that’s a substantial difference from the generic estimate.

[Grannyhugs Graduate10 in reply to UnfitNoMore]

I'm so happy to know that I'll be a very young granny in a few months👍😉

[UnfitNoMore Graduate10 in reply to Grannyhugs]

There’s a few round here that are about your heart age, but that’s another story 🤣

[iain-strachan Graduate10]

Using 220-age I have the heart of a 20 year old. The slightly better 211-0.64*age gives me the heart of a 33 year old!

[Grannyhugs Graduate10 in reply to iain-strachan]

Aren't we good - going to stop stressing about what I eat now, guilt feeling every time I have something I think I shouldn't, obviously it's done me no harm so far. What distance do you run?

[iain-strachan Graduate10 in reply to Grannyhugs]

Only recently graduated from C25K. I have done about 5 Parkruns since then. Now I've just embarked on JuJu's magic running plan. It's the second week only, so tonight I'm planning to run 6k. My local Parkrun is a bit of a quagmire with all the rain, so I've done the 5k run from the plan on a treadmill, and for the short run I use the SPEED podcast, because the intervals are fun and finish up with a longer interval at a higher cadence rate.

I did 5.5k last week (slowly) and really enjoyed it, and felt I could easily have gone on to 6. So, fingers crossed for this evening!

[Grannyhugs Graduate10 in reply to iain-strachan]

Good luck enjoy

[Jazzyrunner Graduate10 in reply to iain-strachan]

Just tried that other formula, and it gives me the exact number I’d plumped for, guessing from how I felt on my last run! I’m going use that 👍🏻 I’d never even heard that formula, so thank you again!

[Jazzyrunner Graduate10]

Aha, very interesting! Think I’m going to save that until I’m stronger and not worrying about injuring myself if I go too fast! 😆

[martinhermanus]

80 percent of training should be below 85 percent of your maximum heart rate. Long slow easy runs are best to condition the heart over the long term. I used to run as hard as possible all the time and one starts hating running quickly if one does that.

[Grannyhugs Graduate10 in reply to martinhermanus]

Thank you. Before I found my max HR it looked like I was doing most activities in zone 5 which I knew not to be true. Now I have correct figures all is good. Looks like I may have to occasionally up the anti ha ha it will be interesting in ski season to see my stats as this is the activity I give 100% to but as I've done it since 1971 may be I'm so finely tuned I'm in snooze zone. Happy running

[linda9389 Graduate10]

I changed my max too as I was always in zone 5. I haven't put it as high as some of the max heart rate readings I've had from my garmin though as often there seems to be one huge spike st up, then st back down to a more consistent level. I'm assuming those spikes are spurious data from a confused garmin! Even ignoring the spikes, my new settings are considerably higher than the 220- 58! And consequently the zones are much more useful too 🙂

[Grannyhugs Graduate10 in reply to linda9389]

Thank you. I hadn’t fully understood max hr but it all makes perfect sense now. That formula should be dropped and come with a health warning 😉 happy running