Hello again Len.  I went outside during lunch today and I attempted to follow the plan in the article to find my max heart rate.  I have to admit that sprinting 400 meters just once was pretty tough.  After the first time I couldn't make it much past 200 or 250 meters at a dead sprint.   Anyway, I did this 5 or 6 times with a combination of walking an jogging between sprints. 

The highest heart rate I saw on my monitor while sprinting was 176.  Is it normal to have an actual MHR that is 15 points under your calculated MHR? 

To make things even more confusing, the monitor recorded a max of 212!!!  I never saw anything near that on the display while I was running.  What's up with that?  Could it be a fluke?  ?:|

This is getting frustrating but I'm not going to give up until I figure it out.    

Hey Len.  Thanks for the response.  Although I can't download the stats from my monitor, I'm convinced that the 212 was just a spike of some kind.  I'm convinced because I checked the montior quite frequently during and after the sprints and not only did I never come close to 200, I never topped 176. 

On a related note, I check my HR when I woke up this morning to get my RHR.  When I first got the monitor on, I was hovering around 55.  However, when I laid back down, closed my eyes and took some deep breaths, I got it to dip down to 39. 

I going to test the MHR again next week and the RHR again tomorrow but for now, I'm going to work with 39 and 176. 

Thanks for all your help.  Without it, I probably would have given up on using the monitor all together. 

-Jason

Hi Dave.   I'm 28 years old which much be a magical year because all of the calculations I've used so far put me in just about the same place for MHR. 

220 - 28 = 192 (I know this is the least accurate)

205 - (.5 * 28) = 191 (This is the accepted standard at Runnersworld.com)

From your wiki link:

205.8 - (0.685 * 28) = 186.6

206.3 - (0.711 × 28) = 186.3

217 - (0.85 × 28) =  193.2

As you can see the range is between 186 and 192.  As I said before, I performed a stress test yesterday which was very similar to the test in your second link and the highest I made it was 176.  So what would you say is more accurate, one of the calculations or the self test I performed?

Thanks for your help. 

-Jason