Related
This discussion has been locked.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

Inaccurate average HR

aglov
over 6 years ago

I've noticed that Garmin connect and Strava show different average HR for same activity. It seems that Strava average is more accurate then Garmin. 

Here is "Time in thones"

And here is Garmin average:

I think it's a bug because most of the time I spent in zone 2 and for me cycling zone 2 start from 116.

And here is Strava 

Does anyone know where the problem could be? Same activity but different averages. How it's possible that average HR can be 113 when i spend most of the time in zone 2(it starts from 116)

Top Replies

All Replies

  • 0 over 6 years ago
    aglov said:
    Same activity but different averages.

    The difference there could be explained by Strava averaging your HR only for the time you were moving (as it apparently did with your speed *), as opposed to Garmin averaging HR when moving and not moving. (You have a big difference between moving time and elapsed time on your Strava activity.)

    (* 11 km/h matches the moving time of 3:52:43, not the elapsed time of 5:16:48, since your distance is 42.71 km.)

    If you don't like Strava automatically adjusting your activity summary to exclude non-moving time, you need to pause your activity at least once (or alternatively, never stop moving). If you do that, your averages for GC and Strava should be pretty close or exactly the same.

    (The big difference between the way Strava and Garmin handle non-moving time is that Strava hides/removes data for non-moving time from the activity -- in its calculated splits and averages -- while Garmin just shows you a moving time and moving speed while preserving all the data from when you were moving.

    aglov said:
    How it's possible that average HR can be 113 when i spend most of the time in zone 2(it starts from 116)

    Looking at your Time in Zones chart from the Garmin Connect activity, the percentages add up to 78% (3 + 50 + 25). The other 22% is either above zone 5 (which seems impossible since you have 0% in zones 3, 4 5) or below zone 1. If you spent 22% in "zone 0" (lower than zone 1), it's easy to see how your average HR could be lower than the start of zone 2.

    It's easy to double-check Garmin's math tho -- if you have 1 km auto-laps in your activity, export the activity as CSV and average the lap HRs in Excel. Your answer should be close to the Garmin-reported average HR.

    You could also export the activity as a GPX file and average up all the per-point HRs, although that would be a lot more work (especially if you don't have per-second activity recording enabled.)

  • 0 over 6 years ago in reply to WillNorthYork

    Oh, cool. I've missed "zone 0". Now it's all clear. Also, I knew that Strava calculates moving time in other way as GC does, so it's obviously that average HR should be different. Thanks a lot.