Get my heart pumping

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Today I want to find my max heartrate.

I’m read­ing a book about fit­ness myths, and the author cites the “220 minus your age” for­mu­la for deter­min­ing maxHR as one that has neb­u­lous roots in sci­ence. She cites a 2001 arti­cle in the Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Car­di­ol­o­gy that says 208 minus age times 0.7 is more accu­rate, but can pro­duce results only accu­rate to plus or minus thir­ty beats per minute.

So since I’m thir­ty-four, my max­i­mum heart rate could be any­where from 154 to 214. Cer­tain­ly not spe­cif­ic enough to base train­ing zones on.

«This is not an easy test,» writes Lance Arm­strong’s train­er, Chris Carmichael. He rec­om­mends going hard­er and hard­er and faster and faster on a bike, «until you sim­ply can’t go any hard­er.» Then, he says, «when your vision clears,» look at your heart-rate mon­i­tor. That should be your maximum.

John L. Park­er, Jr., a run­ner, wrote about how to do it with run­ning. Start out on a day when you’re well rest­ed, he advis­es. Warm up by run­ning two to four miles at an easy pace. Then do some sprints to get your heart rate up. Now you’re ready for the real event. You should start with a series of runs up a steep hill about 200 to 300 yards long. Do it about five times, jog­ging down then charg­ing up, faster each time. On the last sprint up that hill, «keep increas­ing your inten­si­ty until you are sprint­ing at least the last 100 yards at your absolute max­i­mum speed. You should fin­ish this last repeat with that total­ly ‘blown out’ feel­ing you get from sprint­ing the last 100 yards of a race, which leaves you gasp­ing for breath and grab­bing your knees for sup­port.» Then watch your heart-rate mon­i­tor, or, bet­ter yet, have a friend near­by who can watch the num­bers for you. Then write down your maximum.
—Gina Kola­ta, Ulti­mate Fitness 

So my plan today is to go out onto Urbano dri­ve, warm up with a few miles at 140 – 150bpm, and then open the throt­tle up with some inter­val sprints and see how high I can dri­ve the heartrate. I won’t real­ly have a hill avail­able for this, but I can cer­tain­ly exhaust myself on the flats. Pur­port­ed­ly this sort of test is safe for most men under 35, but in case I pull a Jim Fixx in the mid­dle of it, well, you all know what happened.

Published by splicer

3 Replies to “Get my heart pumping”

  1. Jimm Fixx (RIP) went out
    Jimm Fixx (RIP) went out doing what he loved. What more can any­one ask for? But he says NOT to train above 75% of the dif­fer­ence between your max heart rate and your rest­ing rate. He says that most peo­ple your age should train between 130 and 157 bpm. His book says that you can deter­mine the real 75% num­ber mere­ly by run­ning at (in this case) 157bpm. If you tire, then 157 is too high. If not, add a few beats the next time. He says 75% is the max­i­mum you can run with­out tiring.

    You nev­er told me if you’d like his book. I’m not gonna send it unless you do.

    BTW,that run­ning test would kill me.

    Dad

  2. I’d love to read it. I’m
    I’d love to read it. I’m get­ting a lot out of the two fit­ness books I’m read­ing now.

    Inter­est­ing maxHR for­mu­la there, and even if it’s “wrong” by the num­bers it sounds like a good guide­line. One of the things that the book I’m read­ing now seems to be say­ing is that the ben­e­fit of exer­cise comes from push­ing one’s lim­its, not from stay­ing with­in a par­tic­u­lar zone and stay­ing there. I under­stand the con­cept that hav­ing a tar­get heartrate and stick­ing with that means increas­ing per­for­mance as strength and endurance increas­es, but I think that pay­ing atten­tion to the effort makes a lot of sense.

    When I did Bay to Break­ers, my heartrate got up to 184 and Matt and I slowed down to get my HR down, but I did prob­a­bly five of those sev­en miles at 175BPM. I did eight miles at 175 a week and a half ago before get­ting tired. So maybe 175 is not too high because I can go some dis­tance with­out tir­ing? I don’t know.

    Seems to be the oth­er the­o­ry is that if I train between 130 and 157 that I’ll force my mus­cles to get more oxy­gen from my blood with­out increas­ing the flow of blood, and then I’ll have more effi­cient mus­cles. I don’t know. I’m start­ing to buy into the idea of inter­val train­ing, and it might be a good idea for me to drop my base heartrate so that I can increase on the bursts. That way I can work on speed and endurance with­out get­ting myself into insane­ly long train­ing runs.

    And yes, the run­ning test is only adver­tised as being safe for men under 35 and women under 40 with­out con­sult­ing a doc­tor, and even then if there are no oth­er com­pli­cat­ing factors.

  3. “One of the things that the

    “One of the things that the book I’m read­ing now seems to be say­ing is that the ben­e­fit of exer­cise comes from push­ing one’s lim­its, not from stay­ing with­in a par­tic­u­lar zone and stay­ing there.”

    If they are talk­ing about train­ing for a sport, yes.

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