A new way of determining your maximum heartrate

You are curious to know your true maximum heart rate? If you are like me then you have always just estimated your heart rate with one of the several formulas that calculate your maximum heart rate based on your age. You have estimated it because you dreaded the hurt of the traditional testing method, where you torture yourself on the wind trainer by increasing your cadence, power or heart rate every two minutes until you reach this pinnacle of pain - your maximum heart rate. Am I right?

Well, I discovered a new pain-free way of determining your maximum heart rate correctly without all this high tech lab equipment nonsense.

A word of warning, however! Do not try this test, no matter how intrigued you are by its simplicity and accuracy.

The disadvantages of my method are enormous and I therefore think, this method won't find recognition amongst renowned sports scientists and coaches around the world. The disadvantages are the high associated risks of bodily harm or even death and its lack of repeatability.

I survived and I determined a new maximum heart rate of 192 bpm. Now, how did I do this?

I rode along one of Brisbane's roads not so long ago, tucked into an aero position on time trial bars because I was training for a specific event, when I heard the roaring engines of something BIG approaching from behind. There were two lanes of smooth fast hotmix and a wall that protects the new housing estate from road noise but there was not much of a road shoulder.

My brain had made sense of all this information in a matter of seconds and given signal to muscles to move out of the time trail position and onto the drops. I was doing 40km/h when I felt that giant truck next to me. Very next to me! So much next to me that I could almost feel the cold metal brushing my elbow, the wind moving my bike and I had to steer against the truck to not get sucked in. I closed my eyes for a tenth of a second as to not having to look at those enormous wheels that were coming up to my waist and that were spinning fast, way to close for comfort. And then came the trailer and I was just praying that the driver would hold his line and that I would hold my line and that it would be over soon. It felt like eternity and when he finally had past and I didn't get sucked in and I was still riding along at 40 km/h I looked down and there I saw it: 192 bits per minute! My maximum heart rate! Voila!