Veronica - 202 is pretty impressive!. Can you hold that for long? I love the Polar as well but sometimes is hard to work out what to do with all the data that you get from it. Have you found that your Max HR has increased with time, or have you always been able to get it past 200?

doctorfrau - thanks for the links, handy to have. when i originally wrote the post I was interested in seeing what women's Max HR are, not so much the target rates but your info is great never the less. my question rephrased I guess would be 'what is the highest you've seen your heart rate go to on your monitor ?