Originally Posted by
bigfred
It's pretty rare for me to hit max heart rate on any ride not expressly intended for that very task. It's simply too arduous to do during a ride of any duration. If I do hit max, chances are pretty good that I'm shot for whatever remains of that ride.
I should probably include the verbiage that before I got a power meter I used to go try and peg my HR from time to time, so I just looked at garmin connect and found the max that year. it's slightly higher than the 220 - age would indicate for me. After I got a power meter it was more of a FTP/ LTHR thing for me. Interestingly, my LTHR seems to be higher than it would have been based on my non-scientific max HR findings from before.
keep in mind your max HR will differ by sport. here's an interesting website that discusses the variety of ways to find it:
http://www.brianmac.co.uk/maxhr.htm