How I did a Max Heart Rate Test

I decided to do a maximum heart rate test today. The main reason was that I had set my maximum heart rate at 191 beats per minute a few years ago. Whilst that was accurate at the time, the highest I’ve seen my heart rate is 178 bpm in the last year or so.

I’m on holiday in the Scottish highlands and have done a few short easy runs and wanted to do a higher intensity session. I noticed a likely looking hill of a few hundred metres long, on a wide path in Kinlochleven. The path is part of the West Highland Way that runs next to the hydro electric pipes running down the mountain.

I researched different ways of doing a max heart rate test, I settled on doing it on a hill as it also allowed me to do hill repeats.

I ran on the flat for 10 mins, gradually increasing my pace to around my 5km pace for the last few minutes. I then did one minute up the hill as fast as I could hold for the minute. I then walked back down then hill, before repeating three more times. On each repeat I couldn’t go any further before stopping. On the final repeat I saw my heart rate peak at 177 bpms.

You can see from the Garmin graph how my heart rate increased each time:

I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have gone much harder. So have set my peak heart rate at 180 bpm.

I’ve also set my Lactate Threshold at 151 bpm, as this was the findings on my most recent Vo2Max test here. My new heart rate zones are now set as below.

I’ll be monitoring how this affects Garmin’s estimate of my effort for training going forward.