Wrong estimates after performance diagnostics

badbri said:

MaxHR is not trainable

While HRmax is not trainable the ability to reach it is. And that is often overlooked. A person unused to exercise is unlikely to have the mental strength and muscular or respiratory physiology needed to attain their real HRmax. A better term to use is HRpeak as that better represents what can be achieved at a particular stage of an individual's fitness journey.

no formulas, simply the result of that threadmill ramp test. Felt pretty close to my max (thats why i did the diagnostics). But as an overall update to this thread: The 945 starts to accept the new zones, as it does not propose to recover for 3-4 days after an easy training anymore. 

absolutely, its pretty hard to find your own limit. Yesterday when it was quite warm outside i did some 1k intervals on a loop with some decent ascents. Not easy, but helped me to find out, my HRmax might be a little (some bpm) higher than expected.

Agree!  I imagine in a lab test it would be pretty motivated to give it your all, but something like a 5k on a warm day, with a hard finish sprint will do it.  For me I hadn't seen 190+ for many years, had gotten in Marathon shape and intervals just wouldn't get my HR up much and often fatigue would prevent it that hard fo work.  Then I did some 5k training for a few weeks (plenty of 200-1k intevals) which would get my HR into the 183-188 range by the end of workout.  Then on race day which was a PR I kicked it in at the end for the last .25mi... ouch, blurry vision almost fell over!  HR ramped up and hit 195bpm just after the line!  Which was "my max" was thought to be (never hit it in workout, was my "+2bpm") 10 years earlier!   Sometimes you need race day adrenaline to really go hard enough to get 'max' or even close.  Race day for me HR always is 5-10bpm for the same pace for shorter races (5k&10k).  

NickMN said:

Agree!  I imagine in a lab test it would be pretty motivated to give it your all, but something like a 5k on a warm day, with a hard finish sprint will do it.

Pretty much nailed it in this post - there are lots of ways to estimate your MaxHR - but almost any field test (whether it's a lab test, specific MaxHR hill rep test, end of a 5K, etc) is going to be better than a generic formula (like 220 minus age).  I personally don't like a lab test myself - something about the sterileness of the environment, having to wear the max, etc just kept me from giving it my all.

The problem is that a field test is always painful and can be dangerous/risky.  The good news is that once you've done one you possibly don't ever have to do it again as you can get pretty close to estimating going forward by just reducing a bit by age.

Anyway, this is all just a long way around saying that Garmin's Race estimates are based on Vo2max which seems to be heavily based on your pace&HR as it compares to your MaxHR.  If your MaxHR is set too high, then Garmin thinks that you could go alot faster than you're showing and will therefore overinflate your Vo2Max and therefore your estimated race paces.  I actually like that they give this estimated Race pace/times as it gives me a real-world scenario to compare to check the Vo2Max number.