new forerunner 55

I'm new to sports watches and will need some help using it.  I also got the HRM-dual. I want this to track my heart rate during mountain bike rides. Mostly I want to use this to give me an alarm if I push it to much. Later I'll find out from my cardiologist how high to set the alarm.

Recently on the local news there has been the normal warnings about over heating. Some days I have no problem with the heat and humidity others I'm wiped out. A body temperature warning would be nice too. I don't think it's an option with this watch.

  • The watch doesn't measure body temperature. But probably your heart rate would increase if you're overheating (just a guess). Anyway you can set the high HR alert in the watch

  • Thanks I'll have some more questions getting used to the watch.

    One issue is my hearing aids are competing for the Bluetooth bandwidth.  I get  messages once in a while.  Not really a big deal.  I don't use them when I ride my bike. 

    I did set the alarm at 140 bpm and did an easy ride and hit 150 but I didn't hear a alarm.  Probably I can hit 160 safely  but I'll check with my doctor once I get the alarm dialed in. 

  • I don't have hearing aid, but I have used many Bluetooth devices in my life. I don't think that should be a problem. I mean what is the hearing aid connected to? And what sound quality is it? Hi-Fi headphones have no problem. Especially that the HRM sends only a few dozen bytes per second.

    Another thing: almost all HRM straps work with ANT+ protocol as well. Try to configure it to use that (in some devices you might be able to disable BT) so you should have even less interference.

    Regarding the alarm: I'm not sure 100% but there's a chance you can set it to also vibrate the watch. Worth to have a look in the menus or search in the manual.

  • Still learning about how the watch works. I've stopped getting the messages about the hearing aids and the bluetooth.

    Twice while riding the incident alarm went off. Last week I had a small crash and yesterday it went off out of the blue for no reason. Because I have not been riding much in recent weeks I was zonked struggling to get through rides I have been able to make. Both times it sends a message to my wife while I was trying to stop it from sending a message. I see the need for it but I would like to know how to cancel the alert when it's not an emergency.

    When I looked at my heart rate during the part when I was zonked it was as high as 165bpm.  Average rides I frequently get 150+bpm easily. Yesterday was upper 90s with high humidity so that played a part.

    Something else I noticed is my VO2Max is in the top5% for my age and gender, 46. Not sure what that means.