Anyone care to comment on their max heart rate by age (especially those over 45 or so)?
It’s been suggested I need to work harder on short term intervals. I agree. When racing, My max HR is usually around the max suggested for my age, which is 49 years old and a rate of about 170bpm.
220-49 = 171
207-(0.7x49) = 172.7
211-(.64x49) = 179.64
Maybe I still have room to increase.
Nearly 59 years old; Max HR about 182bpm
Possibly but heart rate is highly individual and you can’t rely on rule-of-thumb numbers or compare yourself to age peers. A good way to go is to ask your doctor for a cardiac stress test. Tell your doctor that you do extremely high intensity exercise regularly. An exercise test in a clinic would also help ensure that your heart can take it, in an environment where people are trained to respond to problems.
HR - Age was debunked years ago wasn’t it?
I’m up towards 188-190 at 42… but my max Hr will vary greatly on my level of fitness throughout the year. The fitter I am, the lower my max Hr is, or I should say the harder it is to get it to reach previous heights.
I’m 41. Very rarely go over 165.
As others have said, that 220 minus age thing is wrong for a lot of people, including me. It’s just a very rough guide. Everyone’s physiology is different.
I’m around these numbers, hit 193 earlier but I am older than you
40 years old: 186 max HR
Mid 170s -10 minutes or so but it’s well outside my comfort zone.
High 160s - An hour or slightly more
Interesting posts. Thanks, all. I’ll consider pushing it in some intervals.
Hm… no.
Inaccurate? of course. But usable as a starting point. Max HR is individual (and never fixed for a person), but is generally around a certain value, a good starting number for wtih is 220-Age .
Please do consider Paul’s advice above.
Yes it was I was being polite, and as you stated, it’s inaccurate.
I’m 59. My max for some years has been over 190, with 195 as my max (reliably) recorded. As recently as last month I averaged 177 and maxed at 189 in a short Zwift event and that was not an attempt to set/test Max HR.
220 - Age is complete nonsense for me.
48 here, ~185bpm is the highest I’ve seen this year, but as a trend it’s dropping a bit to ~180… Maybe as I’ve lost some weight and got more cycling fit, during the same period my estimated Lactate Threshold Heart Rate has increased to ~170 from ~162. I drink far too much caffeine when at home, but recently I saw a new low of 38bpm late afternoon while at pc desk.
HR responds to effort with a significant delay so it is not a particularly useful metric for short intervals except to see how the recovery periods are working (if the HR keeps staying up, it might be time to call it a day or take a longer rest). And obviously the formula does not take into account that different people have different stroke volumes that is also reflected in different resting heart rates.
I don’t really understand what you are trying to do here. Presumably you have a power measuring device at your disposal so why not just use that? Try increasing the power targets by something like 5% and see if you can still complete the training, and if it felt like a walk in the park, increase again.
I am 56…My Max is 185
47 & 164.
Resting 46. 38 when asleep
Max HR is usually ~190, but have hit 204 in the last 12 months and I’m 50+ not 16
I did check the 204 at the time too, I could see the HR climb in the fit file as I was concerned it was a blip.
What was nice was the quick drop off back to z2/3 HR levels after the sprint 
I would read “Haywire Heart”. It is a serious book on the subject of heart rate to consider. Lennard Zinn is a giant in field of bike maintenance, his books are iconic. He was very committed to bike racing until he developed exercise induced paroxysmal tachycardia. He describes his experience with ablation and the challenges of other mature riders. His podcasts on the subject are excellent, sincere, and insightful. The research at Stanford in atrial fibrillation was extremely important and methodological to facilitate Apple in obtaining FDA approval with respect to the Apple watch. Heart rate over 50 should be modulated and not pushed as the goal of fitness is to live as long as possible in a disease free state.
I developed atrial tachycardia in my 40s after years of almost daily high intensity riding (resolved via ablation). Impossible to know if that’s why I was on the road to afib, but it’s a risk factor. I don’t like training and don’t care about winning races - I just like zipping up hills by myself. More about mental health than physical fitness. Zwift has been useful in helping me do less hard riding, since it provides other distractions like pace partners, slower group rides, and game features that provide something to do other than just smash it all the time. My riding is more “trainingish” now that I use Zwift and have slow days.
