Is it normal to feel your heart beating?

Long story short... I have mild pectus excavatum (do a google image search if you don't know what it is). Mine however, is nothing like in the pictures, all of the pictures show "severe" cases of it. Because of this, I'm quite paranoid of heart compression. So every now and then I find myself heavily breathing to get my heart rate up, and then place my fingertips on my bare chest just to feel where the beats subside.

Essentially I breath heavily with my fingers in the center of my chest, right where my minor indentation is. Then I move my fingers to the left, like 1/8 of an inch at a time, and see where I can start to feel the beating. I guess this makes me feel better, knowing that my heart isn't beating hard against the minor indentation I have.

I guess in reality I have nothing to worry about, especially since I've been working out lately. Evidently working out can often improve the appearance of mild pectus excavatum, which makes me feel good.

So yeah. I guess I started this thread initially to simply ask if it's normal to feel your heart beating, but turned it into a P.E. talk. But anyway, is it normal to feel your heart beat when your hand is on your chest? Another thing, I was running myself pretty hard on an 18 mile bike ride the other day. At one point I put my hand on my chest and it felt like my heart sure was movin a mile a minute. I assume this is normal too, to feel it beat like that? Even towards the center and in areas of my stomach it seems like I could feel the beat, somehow, haha.