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Oddball heartrate question... (Read 191 times)

Runslowalksalot


    Is it possible to have 2 max heartrates?  1 for cool weather and 1 for hot weather?    Last summer  at the end of a couple  very hard workouts, including a mx HR test when the air temp was in the 90's, I hit 194, but on a treadmill test inside with room temps about 75, I maxed out at 185,  and just this morning with air temps in the low 30's my heartrate topped out at 183 bpm  on my last 200M  progression repeat over 6 miles.    According to the parameters of the treadmill test I was not to warmup,  just a brief walk the go progressively faster then steeper.   The whole test was over in 10 or 12 minutes.   I asked about no warmup and was told that I was not supposed to according to test parameters.

    Anyways.   The training zones I got as a result of my test are based on 185 bpm,  but my while zone training RPE seems about right  in cool temps, but low in higher temperatures.  I'm thinking this is because more energy is going towards keeping me cool while my muscles are still working the same or not as much because I'm going slower to stay in zone.      I was considering   retaking the test but warming up before I go in. It's a tough call as the test costs abut $50 more than my running shoes, and would be a luxury I'd be stretching to afford.

     

    Thoughts?

    joescott


      Yes.

      - Joe

      We are fragile creatures on collision with our judgment day.

        No.

         

        I have never trained by heart rate and have no interest in doing so, but just following Joe's logic it seems to me that if you have more than one max heart rate then the number of possible max hear rates cannot be 2. If your max heart rate is affected by environmental factors (and other things) then it would seem you would have to have an infinite number of max heart rates. But of course, for all practical purposes, there is probably some range of max heart rates, and based on the precision of the instrument you are using to measure it, probably some fixed number of options within that range. But still way more than 2 amiright?

        Runners run

          What Mikey means to say is you are probably not hitting your max heart rate that easily when the weather is cooler.

           

          Your max is probably a bit north of the the highest number you ever achieved and leave it at that.


          Feeling the growl again

            None of the scenarios you describe are likely to give a true maxHR.  Anything you do that lets muscular fatigue creep in as a limiting factor will reduce your apparent maxHR.

             

            There are many ways to get a truer maxHR, but all are along the lines of a) get yourself up relatively quickly to a very elevated HR, then b) so a series of short, very explosive bursts to quickly challenge and push your HR as high as possible.

             

            An example would be to run half a mile very quickly, ending at the bottom of a hill of significant incline at least 200m in length.  Walk for about a minute, then attack the hill as hard as you can.  Sprint to failure and record maxHR.  If hill ends before you tap out, jog back down and hit it again.

             

            Using the hill method, you will likely get a higher value than what you can push on flat ground.

            "If you want to be a bad a$s, then do what a bad a$s does.  There's your pep talk for today.  Go Run." -- Slo_Hand

             

            I am spaniel - Crusher of Treadmills

             

              What Mikey means to say is you are probably not hitting your max heart rate that easily when the weather is cooler.

               

              Your max is probably a bit north of the the highest number you ever achieved and leave it at that.

               

              Not really but I like this better than what I said anyway so lets go with it.

              Runners run

                Yes.  If you have two hearts.

                  Thank you for taking the time to read my signature!

                    Last year, Nobby guided me to a test called the Conconi test.  It didn't speak directly about the Maximum Heart Rate, but more about zones or lactate threshold.

                     

                    Regardless, the output of my test follows.

                    In essence, I did a slow 10 minute warm up and then added .2mph every 1 minute until I got to the point of failure.

                    Every minute, I recorded the average heart rate for the minute on my watch.

                    I did 20 minutes of testing (minute 10 - 30).

                    When I got to the point where I didn't want to test myself anymore, I quit.  (I could have gone more, but I was fatigued enough and I knew I got past the lactate threshold number).

                    The Maximum HR recorded within the test was 184, but that's not the Maximum HR.

                    The reality is that the test didn't give the results that Nobby was looking for or had anticipated.  There was supposed to be a deflection point, but when graphed, there was no deflection point visible.

                     

                    3/20/2013
                    AVGHR: 148
                    MAXHR: 184
                      Time Cumulative Time Speed avg hr
                      00:59.1 10:59.0              6.2 134
                      00:59.7 11:58.7              6.4 135
                      01:00.8 12:59.5              6.6 138
                      00:59.7 13:59.2              6.8 141
                      01:00.1 14:59.2              7.0 144
                      00:59.8 15:59.1              7.2 146
                      01:00.0 16:59.1              7.4 151
                      01:00.3 17:59.4              7.6 153
                      01:00.0 18:59.4              7.8 157
                      00:59.7 19:59.1              8.0 159
                      01:00.0 20:59.1              8.2 161
                      00:59.8 21:58.8              8.4 163
                      01:00.1 22:58.9              8.6 166
                      01:00.4 23:59.3              8.8 169
                      00:59.7 24:59.0              9.0 172
                      00:59.9 25:58.9              9.2 174
                      00:59.8 26:58.8              9.4 177
                      01:00.3 27:59.1              9.6 180
                      00:59.2 28:58.2              9.8 183
                      09:13.4 38:11.6              6.0 154

                    Life Goals:

                    #1: Do what I can do

                    #2: Enjoy life

                     

                     

                    Runslowalksalot


                      With this crowd  I was really expecting some better smartass comments about having 2 max HRs.    Really, should it be that much harder to hit mx HR in cold weather?  There  no hills around here long enough to count for anything, but I do like that idea.

                      Scooterscott


                        With this crowd  I was really expecting some better smartass comments about having 2 max HRs.    Really, should it be that much harder to hit mx HR in cold weather?  There  no hills around here long enough to count for anything, but I do like that idea.

                        If you wanted a greater variety of comments give this post a try on the LetsRun.com message boards!

                         

                        I'll read over there but I am not brave enough to post on that site.

                          You are likely in better shape than last summer, thereby hitting max HR takes a bit more effort.  I could routinely hit 180-190 (max HR ever achieved 194) when I started running even on short easy 3-4 mile runs, now I really have to work hard to get anywhere close to that number, maybe in a race but am not going to run a race with a HR monitor.

                          joescott


                            No.

                             

                            ..... but still way more than 2 amiright?

                             

                            Yes, that's more or less what I was driving at.  I'm swamped at home and at work lately, but tomorrow I'll try to grab a moment to copy/paste something I wrote up for a coworker on a similar question.  Don't get your hopes up too high, it's not peer-reviewed literature or anything, but I think my empirical observations and ruminations may be interesting to some of y'all.

                            - Joe

                            We are fragile creatures on collision with our judgment day.

                            joescott


                              So, FWIW, this is from an e-mail February 6.  My co-worker's Qs and my A follows.

                              Is your definition of maximum heart rate…just the highest you have ever seen your heartrate?  If so, should it be “reset” every so often?

                               

                              [JSH] Ha, this is an interesting question.  I have been learning some interesting things about this lately from some people who ought to know, namely, physiologists.  I don’t even understand it all, but the bottom line is that your maximum HR can vary on relatively short timescales and it seems much more so than what it does over long timescales.  We’ve all heard HRmax = 220 – Age, and certainly HRmax, at a population level, varies with age in an inverse fashion.  But I was talking to one physiologist (a very famous one by the way, Jack Daniels) some months ago and he told me that he has seen athletes whose HRmax actually *increased* with age, and significantly so at that.  I was talking to a physiologist from Firstbeat just this week and I was asking him some questions about HRmax based on some weird things I’ve observed in my own data of late, and he was telling me that he thinks it is not unusual for HRmax to vary even on a short-term basis because of training load and its impact on such things as blood plasma volume and hormone levels such as that of catecholamines and I thought he said adrenaline also.  Lastly, I would offer up that for myself I have had 4 very different “HRmax” measurements in the last 3 years – three of them within the last 12 months.  2011 VO2max test ended with HRmax = 183.  2013 Half marathon race ended with HRmax = 180.  2013 VO2max test (aborted slightly early) ended with HRmax = 170.  2014 VO2max test ended with HRmax = 175.  I so distrusted the 170 result, in fact, that I brought a Garmin HRM into the KU physio lab with me for the second test to have its data available to compare with their Polar (they matched). 

                               

                              That’s a lot more than you wanted….!!  In short, based on what I know, I think it’s a good idea, when you feel like you have good data under the right circumstances, such as at the end of a really hard race, to see what your maximum heart rate was that you sustained for some reasonable period of time (say 10-15 seconds), and then update your HRmax settings to that.

                              - Joe

                              We are fragile creatures on collision with our judgment day.

                              BeeRunB


                                If the max you've seen is 194 bpm, then as far you know, it's 194 bpm. Probably a little higher. Best way to get it is at the end of a hard race.

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