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Indoor cycling not recognised as Intensity Minutes

Former Member
Former Member over 6 years ago
When indoor cycling with my Garmin 820 edge, the time spent is not even registered in Connect as a contribution to the number of intensity minutes for the day.

Anyone else see this, or have I set something up wrong?

Thanks
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 6 years ago
    Well, I contacted support (chat) and shared the evidence of what was happening to them. After a long discussion, where I shared multiple workouts with then, the customer service person said that the 820 can't provide intensity minutes (even though I have recorded it during rides outside) and then basically disconnected. Thanks Garmin :(

    Pretty disappointed with the lack of reactivity (let alone proactivity) from Garmin. When I was in the software industry, having some kind of constructive feedback from my customers was taken as a plus (since most users just feel annoyed by a bug and don't actually report it).

    Never mind - I'll just remove intensity minutes from the dashboard and not bother with it from now on (probably as many other users have also done).
  • 0 over 6 years ago
    Well, I contacted support (chat) and shared the evidence of what was happening to them. After a long discussion, where I shared multiple workouts with then, the customer service person said that the 820 can't provide intensity minutes (even though I have recorded it during rides outside) and then basically disconnected. Thanks Garmin :(

    Pretty disappointed with the lack of reactivity (let alone proactivity) from Garmin. When I was in the software industry, having some kind of constructive feedback from my customers was taken as a plus (since most users just feel annoyed by a bug and don't actually report it).

    Never mind - I'll just remove intensity minutes from the dashboard and not bother with it from now on (probably as many other users have also done).

    I’m really not sure why Garmin’s customer service people think it’s ok to lie to customers with the frequency they do. “We’ve had no other reports of this issue”, “it is working as designed”, etc. It’s a consistent theme on here that support is useless at best and obstructive, dismissive or outright rude on a routine basis.

    In this instance theyve told you it “can’t” contribute to intensity minutes. Which is clearly nonsense. It’s tracking your activity, and syncing that activity to Garmin Connect. It knows your heart rate throughout the activity, pace, etc. There is no reason whatsoever that it “can’t” provide intensity minutes. They’ve just not enabled it to.

    Which, as I said above, renders the Intensity Minutes feature utterly redundant for their best customers; your reward for buying two devices is to lose a trumpeted feature, or have to mess around with duplicates

    Garmin It’s a shame no one really engages on this forum. Surely you must realise that in making the forum available but not engaging in proper dialogue, your risk alienating your most activist customers?
  • 0 over 5 years ago

    The answer you got from customer service (although disappointing) is correct. Activities performed with edge devices do not count as intensity minutes. It is a shame but Garmin has not been able to implement it. Very disappointing...

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to xaviescu

    It's not correct, and it is still not. My Edge 1030 records intensity minutes when using outdoor profile but not when using indoor profile. It doesn't make sense and frankly is at best annoying at worst a software bug I don't expect from a £500 tracking device.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Phasey

    The Edge bike computers do not record intensity minutes. They don't have that function.

    I guess you got a Garmin watch on your wrist while riding outdoors, but not indoors. It is the watch that records the intensity minutes.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to e7andy

    Wrong, try again. I wear my watch in both occasions and in both occasions it is not active only the edge is set to record the activity. If your saying it's the watch that records the intensity minutes why doesn't it do it indoors? all that tells me that the watch has the software bug instead of the Edge device?

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Phasey

    Edge computers do not calculate intensity minutes since they don't have that function. Check the specifications. Here is also a statement from a Garmin rep: "Edge devices do not support Intensity Minutes like our wearable devices." Link to the statement

    The issue here is that the watch doesn't calculate intensity minutes for your indoor rides. You don't have to start an activity for intensity minutes to be calculated so that is not it. Have you checked the heart rate data and compared the rides? An issue with wrist optical heart rate if you use that is that it often measures too low and will therefore not calculate any intensity minutes. I've experienced that on my indoor rides many times, but haven't checked on my outdoor rides.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to e7andy

    I use a chest strap heart rate monitor for all my activities indoors and outdoors these are all cycling activities. The heart rate data is comparable for both activity types. This week I did two cycling activities one outdoors on Tuesday and one indoors on Thursday. Looking at the data the amount of effort was similar, all recorded on the Edge 1030. The intensity minutes registered moderate and vigorous time for Tuesday but zero for Thursday and zero for all other days of the week So can you explain what is going on there, because it doesn't make sense to me?

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Phasey

    The chest strap will not have any affect on the intensity minutes since it is the watch that measures it and it will only use the chest strap with a started activity.

    Yes. It sounds odd. I guess you will just have to continue to test it. One way to see the heart rate in Connect for the watch is to start an activity and make sure you disable the chest strap in the watch.

    To use the heart rate from the chest strap for intensity minutes I think it works if you start an activity on the watch with the chest strap connected but don't save it when done. 

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to e7andy

    Thanks for your thoughts, but at the end of the day the Intensity minutes metric is a bit pointless as it doesn't integrate across devices. I prefer the "training status" metrics they use the "Physio Trueup" feature and give much better indications of fitness progress. It would be nice if I could just disable the Intensity minutes feature as it's just irritating, I'll just hide it from view.

    I use my watch to track general fitness and walking, running activities and my Edge for cycling.