Heart Rate

My resting heart rate, taken in the morning while still in bed, is usually between 42 & 48. My maximum is in the low 170's. I'm 55 years old. I don't use the numbers very often during workouts. I seem to judge the effort levels as being a better gauge of whether I'm in an aerobic state, anaerobic threshold, or whatever I'm shooting for. Since everyone is different and resting and maximum rates are all over the map, you might want to try judging your perception of effort and see how that correlates to heart rate. As you workout more, you'll get to be pretty good at estimating your heart rate, just by the amount of effort your putting out. When I'm on the bicycle trainer, I can invariably guess my heart rate and then when I check the monitor, I'm usually within 5 beats or less.

Hope this makes sense...it's 1:30 AM and I just got home from work!

Max

You gave your resting rate, but what is your max. for the bike and run?

90% is never going to be higher than your max, regardless of resting HR.

thats what i thought but i didnt want to waste time training by hr

The key to training by HR is your max HR. Resting Heart Rate has nothing to do with your max.

Your max is your max - it will stay the same regardless of fitness level. (It does vary a bit as you age, but not enough to worry about it.)

However, your Resting Rate will change based on fitness. As you get fitter, your Resting Rate will come down. (And congrats...40 is a nice low number!) Your body has become much more efficient with its blood supply so you don't need to pump blood as much. As a result, trying to reach a particular percent of max will actually become tougher. And that's good - you can train harder. Picture someone really out of shape. He has a high resting heart rate, but all he has to do is climb some stairs and he's winded and near his max ht rate. See his range between resting and max is pretty narrow. Now, someone who is fit, can run pretty briskly and still stay in below 75%. In either case, each person can use HR Training and improve. It's just the fit guy needs to work harder to get his stronger heart pumping hard.

Basically, what I'm saying is, that you can use heart rate training at any level, regardless of you max, your resting rate, your whatever.

And lastly, hope you're using the heart rate reserve formula to determine your percentages: Heart Rate (for x%) = (x% * (max rate - Resting Rate)) + Resting Rate.