What is your maximum pulse rate?

Surely if you have recorded a max heart of 200 then that is it.

I did a V02 Max & lactate test some years ago on a treadmill which also tried to give a max heart reading. It started by several minutes at a fairly modest speed and increasing this about 1mph every 3 minutes with a minutes rest until was doing about 11.5 mph - about threshold pace for me.

Then the speed was kept constant but the incline raised every 2 minutes until literally I could not keep going.

At the time I was 27 and recorded max of 190.

Interestingly I did the same test 6 months and recorded a max pulse 7 beats lower but 70.5 VO2 Max as opposed to 64 the time before.

In my running career I have often noticed that I find it easiest to reach very high pulses when relatively unfit.

208, that was with my eyes just about rolled back in my head, trying with everything I had to keep going on a tread mill during a VO2 max test. I'm 22.

I think the formulas are too conservative.

I take my pulse at the end of every run over a ten second period and multiply by 6.

Normally I'll finish a run between 168 and 180.

Three times this year I recorded 198 after a hard hill run.

I'm gonna be 48 next month. None of those pulse readings felt especially uncomfortable as I recovered almost immediately and wasn't bent over grabbing my knees etc.

I have a suspicion that the pulse ceiling is a lot higher than previously thought.

I'm 57. The Age formula predicts a max of about 163. The fitness test on my Polar HRM calculates it to be 174. A month ago I ran a 10K and got a max of 189. I'm estimating it to be approximately 192. Will find out when I have a Vo2Max test in several weeks.