. During your second run you should get a higher maximum reading than with any other method – although you or a helper should use a heart rate monitor to take readings throughout the interval, because your pulse may peak before the finish.

How To Find Your Maximum Heart RateA heart rate monitor can help to ensure that you don’t work too hard – or take it too easy! – in training sessions. Depending on the session, your target heart rate will be anywhere between 60 and 95% of your

Q I’m in my mid-40s, push myself quite hard in training, and feel great and in good shape. However, after buying a heart rate monitor, I was shocked to find that my resting heart rate was 46, and that I could reach a maximum of 202bpm during hard

, but your new training paces might come as a surprise too. Before you get started, work out the right benchmarks to work towards by finding your maximum heart rate. If you're a complete beginner, start off with this very approximate formula: 214 - (0.8 x

Q Following your advice, I did a treadmill test using a heart rate monitor to work out my maximum heart rate. The result was 177bpm. However, during 40-minute steady runs my pulse easily reaches 165bpm, about 94 per cent of max! Am I training too

maximum of 170 (220-50, my age). That’s well below the 80-90 per cent suggested in RW. Am I doing something wrong?A Heart rate monitors have had a positive impact upon runners’ ability to train ‘smart’. But what many users don’t fully appreciate

. The instructions were clear and the functions (stopwatch, two interval timers, heart-rate zone) were easy to use. During your run, you can change to view beats per minute, the percentage of your maximum heart-rate, or calories burned. Although the time display

Q I know three ways of calculating maximum heart rate (MHR): 220 – age; 214 – (0.8 x age); and 205 – 1/2 age. For a 30-year-old, they all come out at 190, but for a 60-year-old, the results are 160, 166 and 174 – a large range. Which is the most

information to be useful for runners who simply fancy giving heart-rate monitoring a go. It has a simple stopwatch – start, stop and no lap function – but you can keep a check on your current heart rate, your maximum and your average

between more than one zone in a session. Summary memory Time spent in target zone during your last run; may also include time spent above/below the zone, and average and maximum heart rate in the session. Sampled memory Storage of your heart rate