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Whats the secondary Heart Rate Zone for?

rentagreement
over 1 year ago

Hi,

I found out that there is an option for setting up secondary heart rate zones under user settings. It says these zone settings will "be used by your device for other types of training", see picture.

What other types of training besides cycling are there on the Edge530? None i guess. so what is this for and how to activate these alternative HR zones on the device?

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    Hi, I think there's been some changes to this throughout the firmware update history. I always used just the default zone set and never created any additional set (such as the "cycling" one). But I also had Garmin Support tell me I needed to create a cycling set for certain features to work correctly. I felt that was silly given the default on an Edge is obviously cycling activities. Maybe there was some truth to what they said at the time (certainly I encountered some bugs/issues), but I still stayed with just the primary set.

    Recently I discovered I now have a "cycling" and "secondary" set like you, which I assume came from a firmware update because I didn't add it myself. Maybe Garmin did that to make those features all work correctly, I've no idea. Now after something like a new LTHR detection I have to check both sets to make sure they updated correctly. I sometimes have to manually fix them to match.

    I wonder what the xx40 series zones are like...

    Note you can actually use an Edge for non-bike activities, but it's awkward. I used one recently to log and navigate a hike. It still uploaded to Garmin Connect as a ride, which I had to manually change to a hike, so I still don't see how it's using more than one zone set.

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    I believe the "secondary" heart rate is for everything that is not cycling on a non-Edge device.  For those of us that have Garmin watches as our everyday devices, this makes more sense. So for me, my Garmin Instinct watch uses the secondary values for walking or hiking or any other activity with the watch but my Edge 530 uses the cycling values.  If all you have is an Edge, yeah, it seems kind of silly when you log into Garmin Connect.  As for why cycling needs a different HR Zone set, I'm not sure.  Perhaps its because people may tend to work to a different exertion level on the bike vs. other activities.

    As for doing other activities with the Edge recording, I don't know of a way to do that.  I think the Edge will still think your cycling.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Cranky K.

    You can have a different FTP / vo2max in different sports and most training zones are calculated from those values, I have used my edge with a pistol grip holder for running and found it much easier to run with than my fenix watch, even though I cannot set a running profile, I can still edit my online results and change from cycling to running