Originally Posted by
scottfsmith
If you are going to use a formula as an initial guess you probably want to use the "active people" formula, 211 – 0.64 x Age. I am only about 8bpm above this formula. But as can be seen from the above posts, individual variation is very wide.
Like several others mentioned above I rely on the HR monitor to see if I am not overly stressed. If my HR is higher than it should be it means I might need food or water, am sick, etc.
That's 14 beats too high for me. Formulae are useless. I know what my optimal HR should be in almost every situation and terrain and not 2 beats different from that either. One beat maybe. I watch my HR like a hawk. If I'm on a bike w/o power, I watch the road, HR and cadence, nothing else, other than checking distance for navigation purposes from time to time. I like to finish a hard ride pretty much exhausted, but not before the last mile. Ride enough, watch HR enough, and you get the hang of it. HR is actually a better gauge of that than power. You don't exhaust a number, you exhaust your body, so you want to know what's going on with it.