64 years old in a few weeks, weigh 60kg, don’t drink ( maybe 10 pints a year max ) don’t smoke, healthy diet and have an active job. Resting heart rate is about 65bpm. A few years ago I had minor surgery and went in for a pre check and my hr was 115, same when I went in for the surgery, hospitals don’t bother me and I wasn’t nervous so don’t know why it was that high.

When I’m Zwifting I have trouble doing any exercise in zone 2 as my hr goes up to about 135 even if I’m just spinning slowly/ warming up. Did a race last week of 38 mins with a average hr of 173 bpm which is well above what my max hr should be ( 156 ) I’ve been biking / running for the last 25 years with no ill effect. Shall I just crack on?

what my max hr should be ( 156 )

Based on? All those ‘think of a number and subtract your age’ calculations are just ballpark guestimates.

Have you tried a different HR monitor? I’m a fat, sweaty, hairy monkey man. Most of the time my chest belt HR monitor thinks I’ve flatlined. The one on my wrist is a bit more forgiving.

Any sort of estimated max HR is likely to be inaccurate. The only way to find it is to find out the hard way.

As a 40 yo mine should be 180 based on 220 – age but it got up to 178 on a tempo run at lunch. Seen 198 on zwift races in the last year or so and have seen as high as 206 when really clapping on but that’s been a few years now

Agreed, the rule of thumb for max heart rate is for ‘average joe/joanne’.

Only way to find out the real max is to take it to the max…..

As said, why do you think your max HR is 156? Sort that out and your Zone 2 figure will also change.

FWIW I’m 65, 74kg, non-smoker, occasional drinker and I regularly see a HR of up to 180 bpm.

63, 68kg, my Max HR has dropped from 186 when I was 50 to about 183 now.

Max HRs vary massively on an individual basis. The old “220 – age” describes the mean for the population, it’s hopeless for an individual as the Standard Deviation is 10 bpm, so you’ll see +/- 30 bpm in a group.

Ah ok, that all sounds good then. Yeah I used the 220 minus my age to get my max hr. I’ve had the same readings from 4 devices. I shall carry on as per. Thanks.

Chatting to cardiologist friends people with high max HRs are ‘shallow beating’ ie not filling the chamber fully before pumping it out and people with low max HRs fully fill the chamber each stroke. There is a lot of variability person to person with the stroke…

41yo here, similar characteristics. Max measured HR of 201, moderately hard place find myself constantly 180ish.
Low zone training is really, really slow! (Trying to keep sub 160 is nigh on impossible)
Does drop very quickly though.