Lyn - Tried is the operative word here. I have two different chest-strap monitors, and neither works at all dependably with my pacemaker. The closest I can get to a measurement is to use the chest strap of my old Polar monitor and the read-out on the treadmill at the fitness center. Using that combo (which worked flawlessly before the pacemaker), I see my heart rate start in the 70's, then plateau for a bit at around 90, then eventually go up to 128-130 as a maximum, just where my pacemaker is set to max out. The monitors at my rehab center (which hook up like an EKG machine) today showed me just getting to the 110-115 range, but they don't yet push me as hard as I do at my own fitness center.
The nurse/tech at the rehab center says that I am already running above the maximum heart rate they expected for me (based on my age and meds), but since I tolerate it so well we will keep going up in effort to see how much improvement we can get. These couple of anecdotes make me think that at the moment, the pacemaker is my limiting factor. If the rehab folks concur, we will see about increasing the pacemaker's maximum speed. Then we will see where the metoprolol starts to hold me back.
I do know that I will need a maximum heart rate over 130 to be able to run, as opposed to the 120-130 being adequate for fast walking. Regardless of what the charts and formulas say, I have been successfully operating at that speed for many years until maybe a year before surgery, so I have every reason to hope to get back to that level, or at least most of it.
