I’ve been riding for a month now with my Garmin Forerunner with HR monitor. I am now seeing how demanding muni is. I did a 10 mile 24 guni trail ride and my average HR was 169, peaking to 186. And that was just out having fun! My average HR for a 40 mile event on the 36 was 174bpm. There I was pushing it and dealing with wind. If 174 is my anaerobic threshold that puts my HRmax around 194. So much for the 220-age equation (220-46=174).
I’ve seen mine go to 200 (not just a false reading spike) on climbs, not that I could sustain it for long.
I have never participated in an athletic activity that’s as demanding as MUni. I used to have to train up for weeks to be able to do a century on bike; now I can pretty much do one off the couch. I leave tomorrow on a week-long bike tour, for which I did only two training rides.
I’m pretty sure that all the anaerobic threshold numbers get thrown out the window when you train on something so intense.