I’ve been listening to the various Phil Maffetone interviews on the Uphill Athlete podcast. I’m wondering on what seem like major differences with some other Uphill Athlete material.

Phil sets the MAF at 180-your age, with a few modifiers. I’m equating that MAF with AET, at least in the sense of planning training. The formula does not increase MAF with training, except maybe 5 bpm or so (depending on age). But, he does say that gains in speed at MAF may be large and improvement for long training periods is possible.

The Uphill Athlete guidance, as I understand it, is that as you train your AET (in bpm) should rise and you are aiming at getting AET within 10% of ANT. There is not age compensation here, presumably that is as feasible at 60 as at 20. The Phil Maffetone guidance doesn’t mention bringing AET and ANT closer together, and implies you can’t.

In my case there is a lot of divergence in the numbers. At age 60 my MAF would start at 120, maybe be 125 considering training history. But I’ve had a gas exchange treadmill test recently that says my AET is 145. That test puts my ANT in the mid 160’s, also consistent with my HR history in races of the appropriate duration. 120 or 125 to 145 seems like a big gap. Doing the long sessions in the 16 week mountaineering plan at around 120 is a big difference compared do doing them around 140.