Soaring pulse rates

My pulse soared sky-high last weekend before falling quickly back to normal with a hefty thump.

That's supposed to mean that I have a healthy and fit heart - Fitness Level 1, according to my new Tesco heart rate monitor. Fitness Level 6 indicates a very sedentary lifestyle, while Fitness Level 0 means you can swim to the moon and back. Hopefully the overseas manufacturer paid a recognised company to translate the instruction manual and the levels weren't reversed during the process. If that were the case, the penultimately poor level could still prove accurate if referencing one's current mental state, since my brain hurts from trying to understand it all.

Performing a maximum heart rate test on a treadmill next to an extremely beautiful woman makes you look no wiser than a rutting Stag. I felt like I needed give her some kind of pre-emtive explaination of what was about to happen, but her iPod was up at full volume, presumably to drown out the predictable interference from rutting Stags. So it became necessary to make a tit of myself for a second time is as many days and just get on with it.

I was supposed to warm up and then gradually increase my heart rate by 10 bpm each minute until I neared my estimated maximum and then just gun it for the last minute. Easier said than done. The early stages were quite predictable and I went through 140, 150 and 160 with ease. But there seemed to be a barrier at 165 and the gently increasing intensity wasn't continuing the linear increase in bpm. In fact, my heart rate began to fall as I settled into the pace. 163, 161, 160! To go above 165 took about 3 minutes of charging full pelt at 14 km/h on a 6.0 gradient. I would have increased the intensity still further had I been able to shift my focus from running to pressing any of the + buttons. In fact, I couldn't even look at my heart rate monitor and so relied upon the maximum recorded value. Had there been any foot placement errors, I would have shot off the back of that treadmill and caused some major disruption to everyone and everything in the gym. I think I'll ask for some help next time.

Max HR = 187. It turns out that I needn't have bothered with the above test. Going by the standard 220 - age formula gives an estimated HR max of 186. Apparently I have the heart of a 33 year old man. I've just turned 34, so that gives minor cause for celebration.

Resting HR = 40.

Going by various formulae readily available through Google, I now have targetted Training Zones to exercise within.

This begs the question of when NOT to wear the monitor? I mean, are there any activities where it wouldn't be deemed appropriate to aim for a quick burst into z3?

Current weight is 13 stones 2 pounds (184 pounds / 83.5 kg).