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Problems with Heart Rate Readings and Track Mode Intervals

Coming into two months of ownership of the 955 now - everything's been brilliant until recently where I've started encountering issues (might be update related).

Starting with heart rate readings, it's something I always keep an eye on and quite often use as a reference as running. When I first got the watch, I compared the readings to my Wahoo Tickr and found the watch was coming in extremely close to what the strap was reading throughout exercises. From then, I've been pretty comfortable trusting the data picked up by the 955 for the odd zone 2 heart rate run. The past few weeks; however, I'd say 3/4 of my activities are coming in with heart rate errors somewhere along the way. What seems to happen is the watch will plateau around 140bpm for a couple of minutes before correcting itself. In this period, my actual heart rate could be 60bpm or it could be 170bpm, but the watch always seem to gravitate to around 140bpm. See a few examples below:

30/03/23: 5k race done at maximum effort. Typically for these my heart rate will site high 170bpm. Referring to the below image, the watch had my at 140bpm for the first 12 or so minutes before jumping and correcting itself to around 180bpm for the rest of the race.

30/03/23: On the warm up for the above race, the watch threw my heart rate up to 140bpm at the start (would be lucky to be over 100bpm at this point) and plateaued around that number. I did a couple of strides (as well as other drills) during this warm up which usually always picks up my heart rate. See below graphs compared to an equivalent run done the day before which contained strides. 

Equivalent workout from the day before:

28/03/23: Attempted an easy run (based on heart rate). As soon as I started, my watch jacked my heart rate up from 70bpm up to 135bpm and did random plateaus from there, none of which correlated to the effort I was putting into the run. After 8 minutes, the watch corrected itself and suddenly dropped the heart rate by 30bpm.

21/03/23: Another easy controlled run intended to be done by heart rate. Everything was good and working until around 24minutes in when the heart rate readings spiked and plateaued (immediately dropped my efforts but the watch was doing its own thing). After 4minutes of errors, the watch dropped my heart rate from high 140bpm down to 70bpm where it, again, plateaued before fixing itself a few minutes later.

Next up is structured repeat training intervals created through the watch. An example from a few weeks back, I created a 10x400m on/off track run workout with warm up and cool down. For some reason, the watch would skip the 400m off, but gave me the full distance on my watch saying I did it in the time it took the watch to skip the off interval (milliseconds). The result of this was my workout ended up 4km longer than what I actually ran, and at world record paces. I had to manually correct everything but residue of the errors are still shown in the splits. 

It's also worth noting that on the above, I had a primary race widget set up on my watch (target was 16:59 for a 5k). After this workout, it dropped my predicted finish time from 17:XX to 9minutes. Despite deleting the activity from Garmin and my watch, my watch would not ignore this false reading which messed up the training recommendations and predictions until the race was complete.

  • Just an update, the heart rate readings are getting worse. On a 16km long run, the readings were incorrect for around 18minutes before sorting itself. After an hour or so, I did a 2km pick-up. Typically on these my heart rate would go 165bpm+; however, although the heart rate did go up with the pace, it plateaued at 150bpm, no matter the effort or elevation. Once my 2km pickup stopped, the heart rate remained the same for a few minutes after the effort before suddenly dropping to 60bpm and staying there. I then did another 1km pickup at the same pace as the first one, with my heart rate staying at 60bpm for this and the rest of the workout. See graphs attached. 

    Because the heart rate readings aren't working correctly, I'm finishing these long runs only for the 955 to say my training readiness is 100% in it's prime immediately after. What's strange is that as soon as the workout is finished and I look at the heart rate widget on my watch, the heart rate always shows the correct reading. It's only when I start a workout that everything breaks.


  • 15.09 beta update: heart rate readings still broken.

  • I wish Garmin would fix this or replace or upgrade us.  Because the same has happened with me since I got mine.  It has even cost me money going to the doctor thinking it was my heart.  

  • Same issue on steady run and any other mode  

    FW 15.19 in beta currently 

    switching to stable...

  • I’m experiencing the exact same problem & have also asked the doctor about it infact I had an ecg which was normal at the hosp & I also have a 6 lead kardia ecg and stopped mid run to take a reading a couple weeks ago it showed a completely different Hr to the watch which was stuck at about 80 bpm there’s been a few issues since buying the forerunner 955 solar I feel the current issues are caused by the hot weather but also no matter what training run I do it’s basically got me in zone 4 continuously which just can’t be right it’s froze several times in the cold weather too just stuck and I’ve had to end the activity and switch it off & on which isn’t acceptable tbh I’m constantly checking the watch as I run having to stop and mess about with it ended my activity 3 times yesterday trying to get it to behave it’s self