Question about heart rate
 

Sorry for asking so many questions over here... I'm still pretty new to the wonderful world of exercise. :P

I was wondering a couple of things:
1.) Where one's heart rate should be during cardio workouts
2.) are the heart rate things on treadmills and ellipticals accurate AT ALL?

Because if so, I'm some kind of freak. My resting heart rate is at the high end of normal at around 80 bpm, but there's nothing wrong with my heart and I have low-normal blood pressure, so my doctor has never worried about it. I've noticed, though, that when I start doing cardio exercise, it spikes up FAST and stays there. I can feel my heart beating really fast, but according to the machine, it will go up to around 180 within a minute or so of starting and sometimes it goes over 200 during the workout. If my heart were beating 209 times a minute, would I still even be alive? I'm a bit skeptical. I'm 21 years old and pretty healthy, so I don't think I'm in imminent danger or anything... just wondering if I can trust the machines and/or my body.

1) Depends on your goals.

2) Depends on the machine.

Many in depth articles have been written on #1. Here is a really good one to get you started.

Thanks for the article, John! It's really interesting, and I've been spending the past bit (procrastinating and not studying for my modern physics final) reading through the series. It's really fascinating what our bodies do to adapt to endurance training. It does look like perhaps I should be watching it a bit as I'm definitely one of the beginners he talks about and probably don't need that much intensity to get my body to start adapting. I'm not going to put too much faith in the machine to be accurate, but at least it's a ballpark range.

I'm coxswain on my school's men's rowing team, and the Fall season we'll be going into at the start of school is composed of 5-6k head races (time trials), which is exactly the type of endurance-demanding competition the author talks about. I'm going to send this article to my rowers to peruse over the summer.

The conventional formulas can be way off for some people; I'm one of those. I have seen my heart rate as high as 198. That was at the end of an 8k race. It will get lower as you get fitter. I don't get that high now even at max exertion. Doesn't mean my max has gone down, only that I'm fitter. On the treadmill when I've got both my hrm and use the treadmill hand meter, they're roughly the same. The hand meters can be wonky and show a lower rate for a long time and then shoot up, though.