I’m a 37 year old male and I just started taking my riding seriously this year. I started wearing a Polar heart rate monitor about a month or two ago and everything seems great.

I have a very hilly but short 17 mile road loop that I ride when I only have an hour or so for riding. I did this ride yesterday and my monitor says my HR Max was 222 and my HR Avg 165. I trust the 165 is correct, I’m not sure I trust the 222. I know I pushed myself pretty hard but a HR Max of 222 is this even possible?

I didn’t feel that great last night and still don’t feel so good today. I checked my blood pressure last night and it was 120/58, don’t know if that makes any difference.

Any thoughts?

Carl

Sometimes when my monitor loses it's signal briefly or gets some interference it registers a really high HR that I know is false. I would assume that this is what happened to you.

The average is probably pretty close to correct, but even it will be skewed a little high because it's averaging in the false 222 reading for the period of time it was mis-reading.

Hart to Hart was pretty cool

Yah, I said I wasn’t feeling all that great!

222 is possible. I once hit 263 on a stress test as a teenager. The only way to know for sure is to actually take your pulse and count.

Thanks

I would be suspicious of the 222 also. While the 220-age formula for MHR can be way off (I'm 54 & my max is around 200), this does sound more like some momentary interference or something. Can you look at your monitor during a hard effort? A hard but not quite all out effort should get you somewhere around 90%, and you can guesstimate max from there.

I looked back over my training log for the past month and found my highest HR max was 180 and my average HR max in the mid 170s. I also looked at my stats for that same ride and my max was 178 with an average of 160 I did push myself harder this time but if I hit 222 I think I probably would have puked.

So I’m going to call it a false high for now and the next time I ride that loop I’ll try to push myself to the same level and see what I come up with.

Anyone know how heart rate relates to blood pressure?

Does BP go up with HR or just volume?

Carl