Wrist HRM problem - goes up way too fast at beginning of run

Former Member over 7 years ago

first of all: all the best for 2018, hope we run a lot of kilometers. or miles ;-)

I need your opinion here.... highly appreciated...

Using my 3d Fenix 5 sapphire now, had it replaced twice but the problems come back with every replacement. Look at these heart rate graphs at these activities first:

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/2399752933
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/2387120242

As you can see my heart rate shows a strange behaviour at the beginning of the run. It jumps to somewhere between 140 and 150 in less than a minute, stays there for a while, and then after a minute or 2 sometimes more it goes down to my real heart rate. I have tried wearing the watch higher up my arm, about 2 inches away from the bone in my wrist but that didnt help. The reading of my heart rate not during an activity looks decent.

Garmin stated: "you do a lot of interval training, you need an external HRM monitor to get correct results."

that is not why I spent a lot of money on a watch with a wrist HR meter. And the problem does not occur only in my interval training, it occurs also occurs during long runs.

I really don't know what do to now. Garmin support will probably make me send the unit back in for replacement but I doubt that the problem lies in hardware of the unit. as HR readings during the day, and later in the activity look ok. what do you think?

0 CarlHaines over 7 years ago

Osea, Looks like you found a bug. I confirmed the same thing today. It does require you do the same exact thing to see the temporarily high HR when switching to Indoor Ride with the Fenix OHR. I had it happen once and then tried to see if it would do it again and failed until I realized that you must Broadcast from the Fenix AND be connected to the Edge then switch to doing an Indoor Ride on the Fenix. The problem did not occur if I broadcast HR from the Fenix but did not connect to another device before switching to an Indoor Ride on the Fenix. While trying to reproduce the problem I was using a Scosche Rhythm+ connected to a Vivoactive for comparison so that I would be sure that the HR reading on the Fenix was incorrect.

I don't think this is a big deal and my advise would be "don't do that." I did have the battery die on my edge during a ride and had to switch over to my watch to record the rest of the ride, so this might be one of those cases under normal circumstances where this would occur.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

I have the same problems, Garmin can't fix them because they've had more than enough time to so it's just a hardware flaw. The best thing they could do is allow a paired cellphone to handle the gps tracking for running.

0 CarlHaines over 7 years ago

I have the same problems, Garmin can't fix them because they've had more than enough time to so it's just a hardware flaw. The best thing they could do is allow a paired cellphone to handle the gps tracking for running.

What? I got my first Garmin watch so I would not need to run with a cell phone. I run more these days and the battery on my phone would be dead from GPS usage before I finish my run. If you have GPS problems with your Fenix, you must have a defective watch.

0 Former Member over 5 years ago

I have a Vivoactive 3, but thought that this article could help some of you. I was also curious why my heart rate is so high at the start of my runs. It may not be a problem with your watch. https://runninginsystems.com/2015/11/07/question-from-a-reader-why-does-my-heart-rate-spike-at-the-start-of-a-run/