why am I getting regular upticks in stroke rate during my rowing activities while using a fenix 7s and a garmin HR chest strap

Hello,

Do you wear your watch on your wrist or is it attached to the boat ?
Is the watch strap tight on the wrist ?
When rowing, is the boat stable ?
Are there sometimes parasitic movements of the boat which could be misinterpreted by the accelerometer ?

Hi,

I wear it snuggly on my wrist. The  boat is pretty stable.  I am not sure what you mean by parasitic movements of the boat, but because the upticks occur at regular intervals and also are the same magnitude, it makes me think they are some kind of artifact.

thanks

Indeed, you are right, the increases are too regular and are also of the same magnitude, so it cannot be because of jolts in the boat, due to different ways of rowing between crewmmates, for example. That's what you said in your message. ;-)

If I understand correctly, you already had the problem with your forerunner 735 ?
Do you see the same thing during an indoor rowing activity ?
Have you updated your watch to the latest 10.43 firmware ?

I get the same thing, check the graph against time, mine are exactly 1m 30s apart. I guess it must be a feature of the app.

Hello,

I noticed the same thing recently.
In my case, the abnormal spikes (over 100 strokes per minute) seem to have appeared after the 13.22 update.
Updates since then have not changed the problem, the current software version on the watch being 14.68.

The regularity of the spikes every 500 meters made me think that I had Auto Lap activated every 500 meters. When I deactivate Auto Lap, the spikes disappear.

I've seen a similar problem with spikes during swimming activity fixed in Beta 15.68 :
"Fixed issue causing lap cadence spikes in swim."

I hope that fixing this issue for the swimming activity will also have a positive impact on the rowing activity.

The stroke spikes, that have been a niggle since February, have been removed from swimming with the latest beta. 

Thanks for the positive feedback. This is a very good thing, but what about rowing? Will this bug fix for swimming also have an impact on rowing? That's the question.  ;-)

Can't answer that as I don't row. But, there's every chance the fix applies. Let us know after your next rowing session. FWIW, I had these spikes on several watches and it's been fixed on all.

cool - I would like to try as 11 months on they are still doing it!  Could you please tell me, how do i install the beta upgrade?