Vo2max, MHR too high, MHR too low?

Yea I’ve read that as well so I’m not that far away from the presumable truth I guess.

I had a recent experience I thought might be on topic for this thread.  

I've been thinking for awhile now that my Max HR was set too high in my Garmin Connect account.  It was an old max HR that I had previously verified in a field test, but that was a long time ago (like 8+ years) and I haven't seen anything close to that in any workout or race since. 

Assuming my maxHR has depreciated with age (which is typically accepted as about 1bpm per year after 40-45+), and also suspecting that my current Vo2Max as measured by my watch is overestimated based on the race times it's giving me...I made the decision to change the maxHR from 195 down to 185 which seemed to be a more reasonable estimation based on a few observations.  I was also hopeful it would result in more accounting for "anaerobic" runs as I'd be getting closer to what I think is my max in some of my interval work.

So I girded my loins anticipating a big drop in "the number" after my next road run.  Imagine my surprise this morning after an interval session on the road when it showed my Vo2Max score about the same as normal!  And the corresponding race times are pretty close to what it's been listing for me as well.  Hmmm, either I had a breakthrough workout and the score would've been even higher with the old MHR setting or it was pretty close to accurate all along.  The workout did give a higher anaerobic stress score than I've seen in a long time, so changing the MHR seemed to impact that at least.

It’s also possible that the algorithm needs more data before setting a new VO2. There does seem to be some smoothing or averaging going on, presumably to prevent the reading bouncing around too much. It’ll be interesting to see if it falls in the coming week or so.

Yeah I was afraid of that.

Ha ha, not really.  It's just a number afterall.  But I have noticed it will definitely drop following a bad workout, maybe it was several bad workouts in a row though.

badbri

How did your test work out.

did the VO2MAX go down?

I have had a few days where I have been running on paved roads (usually do a lot of trail runs) my vo2max has gone up one step every day for two days in a row?

But, I still not sure about how correct my MHR is.

BowMaestro said:

How did your test work out.

did the VO2MAX go down?

I have had a few days where I have been running on paved roads (usually do a lot of trail runs) my vo2max has gone up one step every day for two days in a row?

But, I still not sure about how correct my MHR is.

Well surprisingly, my Vo2max has now held steady despite a couple of road runs (I also mostly trail run).  So either there is not yet enough data for it to "reset" my value, or the previous number was mostly correct.  I think it's the latter because I recall having changed my zones around awhile back and it greatly depressed my Vo2max number as a result.

Ok interesting.  I don’t think it needs more than a couple of runs for the data to change, so you are probably good :)

Yep, another road run this morning and it's holding steady.  Well, technically it has dropped a bit over the last 2 weeks (52.7 to 52.8 to 52.9 and now to 52.6) but none of those fluctuations are meaningful and they all show as "53" on my watch and in Garmin Connect anyway.

Ok interesting!

I actually lowered my MHR with 5bpm, just to se if that would do anything.

I believe my MHR is 205, based on previous logs of max efforts, but it’s high for my age.

and I’m not sure if it still is so high since it was about 1,5 years ago, and then I reached 209.

but I lowered it to 200 a few runs ago.

but I keep holding my Vo2max, and rising slowly, now it’s 55 ish.

even during trail runs.