Keith Stone wrote:Well, I find that amazing. You must have the oxygen uptake of a shop vac. While my gut feel is your MHR is closer to 185, as I said above, there are outliers in everything. I just wouldn't assume that's the norm.
No Keith, my HRmax is most definitely NOT 185, and I'm no more an outlier than the next guy. I know at least a couple dozen other regular LetsRun posters (and plenty of other folks) that could say the same thing about running at 90% HRmax being pretty comfy after a long period of work focussing on the aerobic threshold.
But I agree with you that it's not the norm, because it's not the norm for people to concentrate on aerobic threshold. Or so it would seem. Some of the regular bright lights here will tell you AeT is about 85% of HRmax, regardless of training and conditioning. But that's simply not the case. You can improve your aerobic threshold through specific training, and get to the point where 90% of HRmax becomes about M-pace, and is plenty comfy enough to run for 60-75 minutes, and in any event sufficiently comfy to hold a conversation.
Now when I say "hold a conversation," I'm not implying you're not working, or that you can speak in run-on sentences, but basic conversing shouldn't be all that difficult.