My Garmin recently started doing something really weird, and I only confirmed this by wearing my old Polar (with chest strap) at the same time when I go for a run. The Garmin keeps telling me my heart rate is above 169 (sometimes up to 185-190) when my Polar never goes up above 130-ish. Has anyone else experienced this? If so, is there a way to recalibrate/reset the Garmin to correct this problem? I just started training by heart rates last week and this has make it impossible for me to follow the program I downloaded. Any advice will be greatly appreciated!
Spinacoli are you using the garmin chest strap? If you want to train on Heart rate basis then you need a chest strap - the technology is suited to 24/7 monitoring rather than intensive training
No I'm not using a chest strap with the Garmin. I used my old Polar with a chest strap to determine that the Garmin was indeed acting "wanky" :( I read up on this and fixed the high readings problem by waiting for the heart-rate reading to be stablized before pressing the start button. But the following day I was on a treadmill running at a faster pace and the heart rate was only registering as "warm up" range on the Garmin. How long are these watches supposed to last before it becomes unreliable?
Spinacoli you can experiment with wrist positioning strap tightness etc but you are fighting a fundamentally poor way of gathering HR data. It works for some people but for many it doesn't work well for running and many other exercises. If you are seriously wanting to train by HR then that only works if you have an accurate reading - the easiest way to get that accurate reading is with a chest strap.
