Dr. Lankford with the save! Yeah, my equation would come out to -190 BPM for my max HR
Ummm.... Either you are -17 years old (that's a negative number!!) or you calculated wrong.
If you're 20, then (220-20) x .8 comes out to 160. If you are zero, the number is 176.
People definitely need to be able to carry on a conversation while hiking. But I always figured during an aerobic workout -- where I don't usually go for more than 30 minutes at one or more activities (I used to jog), I always figured if you could talk while doing it, you weren't working hard enough. Then, in the last minute of whatever I am doing, I like to really go at it. On an elliptical machine on a good day, I can get my HR up to 170 at the very end.