How I did a max heart rate test

I decided to do a maximum heart rate test while on holiday in the Scottish Highlands. I'd been using a max HR of 191 bpm — accurate a few years ago — but the highest I'd seen in the past year was 178 bpm. It was time to get an updated number.

I was in Kinlochleven and spotted a hill of a few hundred metres along the West Highland Way — the path next to the hydro electric pipes running down the mountain. Wide, clear, and steep enough for the job.

The protocol

I ran on the flat for 10 minutes, gradually increasing my pace to around 5km race pace for the final few minutes. Then I did four hill repeats:

• Run uphill as hard as I could sustain for one minute
• Walk back down as recovery
• Repeat four times

On each repeat I pushed to the point where I genuinely couldn't go any harder before stopping. On the fourth and final repeat, my heart rate peaked at 177 bpm.

I'm confident I couldn't have gone harder than that. So I've set my maximum heart rate at 180 bpm, rounding up slightly to account for the fact that I may not have quite hit absolute maximum.

Updated heart rate zones

I've also updated my lactate threshold to 151 bpm — the result from my most recent VO2Max lab test. With a max HR of 180 bpm and a lactate threshold of 151 bpm, my heart rate zones are now:

Why this matters

Knowing your actual maximum heart rate — rather than using the 220-minus-age formula — gives you more accurate Zone 2 boundaries. For me at 51, the formula gives a max of 169 bpm. My actual max appears to be 180 bpm. Training with 169 bpm as the ceiling would have my Zone 2 set too low.

If you're serious about Zone 2 training, doing a max HR test is worth 30 minutes of discomfort. It takes the guesswork out of your zone boundaries.