Hello all! I don't post here often but wanted to give a quick update on my comeback trail, and ask a question about age-related declining max heart rate.
The update begins with a reminder that, due to disabling back troubles, I was scarcely able to run a step for several years. I ran no races between early May 2019 and early February 2022. The comeback began in October 2021, when my back suddenly said, "I think you're okay." I felt incredibly old and creaky at that point and was running a mile or two at 11:30 pace in those early jogs. Then, slowly at first, things came back on line. By Christmas 2021 I had my first legit hard run and said, "Hey, I can do this."
I've had remarkably smooth sailing since then, running 10 races in 2022 and 12 races to date in 2023, almost all of them 5Ks but with a pair of 10Ks per season. Weekly mileage generally hovers between 25 and 35, with an occasional week at 40 or more. Long runs top out at 10 miles. After deciding in that 2020-2021 period that my running--much less racing--days were over, I've been gifted with what we aching oldsters all hope for against all odds: injury free running and racing that feels like the old days, even if we're not moving quite as quickly as we used to.
My best 5K race pace has settled right around 7:45 pace. I ran legit 7:37 pace in one 5K back in March, though, in perfect cold weather on a great course, so there's a little more waiting for me, and I'll keep hoping to capture that magic, tweaking my training as I go. I haven't raced a half marathon in years but think that there might just be one more of those in my future, if I can do a few long runs that distance as prep.
Yesterday I averaged 7:45s for a 4-mile turkey trot. No complaints.
Which brings me to my question. From tracking heart rate data over the past 15 years, I know that my max HR has slowly declined, roughly one beat a year, from 200 or so down to....what? As recently as May 2022, I notched 186 in the final quarter of a hard warm-weather 10K, but all the data from this fall's six races suggests that my max HR has declined notably: to 180 or 181, perhaps. That data includes average HR for the races, which has declined from 175 in my two hardest races last fall (2022) and 171-173 in many other races (including a 171 on a warm day this September) to 169 (three races in the past 8 weeks).
In other words, it feels as though I've experienced a sort of notch-decrease in max HR rather than a slow and expected drip-drip decline.
I turned 65 in April.
Has anybody experienced this same phenomenon? I've managed to run the same fast times, I should say, despite this seeming loss of max HR capacity.
I know from Tinman that max HR is generally elevated on warm days. All my recent races have been on colder days. So perhaps that's a small part of it. (I race much better on cold days, especially as I age.)
Would be happy for your collective thoughts on HR decline with age.
cheers, all.