Related
This discussion has been locked.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

Max heart rate and lactate threshold

4185499
10 months ago

Hi 

I have a couple of question and any help would be great.

Last year in May (15 months ago) I recorded a max heart rate of 191 on a garmin 245. This year I have not reached near that and on my current garmin 265 I have only had a max of 179 currently. With an increase in fitness in the year, is my max heart rate likely to have dropped that much or should I use last years value as a manual max heart rate?

I have bought a hrm pro plus last week as well to get more accurate heart rate readings (maxed at 179 currently in a 5k today). I did a lactate threshold test and got a bpm of 165. Will this lactate threshold be affected by the max heart rate? (I mean will 165 change if I redid the test with a manual max heart rate of 191 or 179).

Final question, my vo2 max estimate, will that change after a few runs depending what I put in the maximum heart rate and if so, by a lot or an insignificant amount?

  • 0 10 months ago

    I'm not an expert, just another user, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

    I highly doubt your max HR changed that much in a year. But which number is more accurate? That's hard to say. The watch will auto-detect your max heart rate if you have that feature turned on. It's a calculated max, not an actual measured max, but with a good heart rate strap it'll usually be fairly accurate.

    The lactate threshold test is based on your respiration rate. It finds the pace and heart rate level where your breathing starts to get a whole lot faster. Max HR setting will not change the threshold test result, but if the max HR is too far off the test will fail to record a result.

    Your max HR setting will affect your vo2max estimate noticeably. The higher you set your HR max, the higher VO2max you show since you appear to be putting out more work with less effort.

  • 0 10 months ago in reply to trulan

    All three answers are great, thank you for your time on that. Appreciate it