How To Find Maximum Heart Rate

While I don't think it's a particularly important or useful data point for an endurance athlete, it is interesting to know. Particularly if you have a sometimes malfunctioning heart rate monitor, by knowing your maximum heart rate you can identify "impossible" spikes. So here's how to establish your maximal heart rate for running.

A running track is the best place to establish a field measurement for your maximal heart rate

Ideally on a track. Warm up very easy for ten minutes. Then run one mile at tempo pace or a little slower than your 10K race pace. Once your tempo mile is done, increase your pace by 20 seconds per mile every minute until you can no longer increase your pace. If you're running on a 400m track, you should reduce the time it takes you to complete each 200m by 2 seconds until you can no longer increase your pace. Just before you start to slow down, look at the number on your HR monitor. This will give you a good estimate of your unique maximum heart rate. Use a GPS watch with a chest strap monitor! Wrist heart rate monitors are convenient but too inaccurate.

As a back up plan (or if you're someone that doesn't have a HR monitor - I've heard those people exist), just after you stop, take your wrist or carotid (neck) pulse for 10 seconds. Your pulse should be popping so shouldn't be hard to find. Take that number, e.g. 31, and multiply by 6. In this example 186. Use it to validate what your watch gives you.

The actual value has no real meaning in terms of your fitness or potential as an athlete (ie. I'm fitter than you because my max heart rate is higher) but it may help you to know what your personal ceiling is in terms of heart rate when establishing training zones. And, the above protocol is just a good high end workout to throw in the mix!

There's a widely derided formula that you can calculate your maximum heart rate by subtracting your age from 220. Our squad performed the above protocol and actually found the formula surprisingly accurate with our sample! Results below:

Name	Predicted by (220 - Age)	Result of above test	Delta
Connor	192	194	+2
Kate	177	175	-2
Mandy*	180	176	-4
Tayor	186	187	+1
Patrick	173	184	+11

*manual HR recording