220 Minus Age

220 minus your age. If I was to give this information to all the folks who have asked about it in the past as a method to determine one's maximum heart rate, I would be right about 92.788% of the time. And that is a percentage that will get you on the plus side in Vegas. Good odds. IF YOU ARE A NUMBER. Unfortunately,

YOU ARE NOT.

You are a name. You are a living, breathing, walking, dynamic and constantly changing intelligent life form. You are unique. You do not fit into the lump of those in your age standard who used the calculator on their mobile device to compute their max hr. The Grandfather of Ironman, John Collins, said it best, "We are all an experiment of ONE." Maybe you have heard me say in this regard that, "Our bodies are smarter than we are."

IT'S TRUE.

As an example. You all know by now of my little adventure last week with chest pains. Conventional wisdom says that when this happens you need to drop what your are doing and call 911. You can fool around and be flippant or cavalier with the flu or skin rashes, but if you get chest pain on the left side, with lightheadedness and tingling of the extremities, make the call. RCVman is stubborn however and once the pain hit the six hour mark, he made two calls and proceeded to drive himself to the ER. Where he was relieved to find the treatment more of the name variety than number (despite have both on his wrist band). All the EKG, ECG, chemistry, X-Ray, vitals and blood analysis was negative, and so much so that the MD on call recommended that I have some follow-up blood work done to get to the bottom of the issue and find out what was actually taking place.

Which was then done two days following with the new PCP. Yesterday his office called with the results. But first, some additional back story. Without question, the VBA will recall the post of Dec. 15 (RCV) where I intrepidly announced that my goals for 2010 included:

1) Adding two hours of workout time to my weekly schedule, and
2) Cutting 50% (of the remaining) fat from my diet.

Please remember that all this is an experiment of one and that my body is way smarter than I am.

Please also know that, to get your maximum HR you need to conduct a stress test on a treadmill or bike, to determine YOUR actual max, not the other billion people in your age group. You are not a number. Additionally, the whole point of knowing what your max is, is to train in zones that approach it, progressively overloading the system so you can stay in that zone longer. Which would you suppose will make you faster, five seconds at max, or twenty minutes at 95% of max? The key word here is YOU. Even more astounding is the recent studies that indicate that fit people who use RPE (the voice of the body) when training are usually very close to the proper percentage of max to determine rate of training or racing intensity. Imagine that! Your body already knows what your HR monitor is about to reveal. Incredible. But true!

Yesterday the doctors office called with the results of the second blood tests. The administrator was quite amazed at how good they were, using phrases such as, "well within established ranges", "an excellent score", "an exceptional ratio". That is until she got to the last one, LDL, "bad cholesterol". At which point she asked if she could put me on hold while she had a word with the doctor. You can imagine what I was thinking while listening to Jose Feliciano on hold.

"You still there?"
"Si, y Feliz Navidad."
"Yeah, well, the reason I wanted to check with the doctor is that your levels of LDL, while not bad, are not as good as the levels in all your other areas, and I though that might mean something."
"Does it?"
"The doctor said no, and matter of fact, he thought that as a whole your tests are some of the best he has ever seen and reflect a body in excellent condition, much like a person thirty years younger."
"Really? But I detect a note of concern in your voice, is there more?"
"Well yeah, usually when I give people these results I include some tips."
"Such as?"
"You might want to consider adding some exercise and cutting a little fat from your diet."
"OK, thanks for that."
"Your welcome, do you have any further questions?"
"Just one."
"Go ahead."
"How do I determine my maximum heart rate?"
"220 minus your age."