Related

Cycling HR Zones Incorrect - Do Not Match GC App or Watch Settings

ZombieSloth
8 days ago

Hello,

I am having an issue where the HR zones in a cycling activity are not displaying or saving correctly in the activity.

For reference, here are the HR zones from a running activity, which match the user settings I have configured:

In a recent cycling activity, these are the HR zones displayed and saved with the activity:

I have no idea where the values in the cycling activity came from since I never set these. So far I have not found a way to change them either. This looks to be messing up some of the performance metrics too because I have seen my FTP jump from 201W to 255W in the last 2 rides, but that cannot be possible because I have been detraining due to an injury over the last few months. Granted, there have been several FW updates released in that time, but something seems way off here.

These are the things that I have tried doing but have not made any difference:

  • Made sure that no sport-specific HR zones are defined / default HR zones only
  • Created and remove sport-specific HR zones
  • Reset the default HR zones, changed between %Max and %LTHR
  • Deleted the Bike activity, removed it from the watch, and recreated it

The only thing I can think of is to do a hard reset on the watch, but that is really annoying since I have to go through all the setting customizations and make the activities again.

Any help here would be appreciated. Thanks!

Other notes:

I use a HRM Pro+ strap for all of these activities.

For cycling I use the watch and do not have an Edge bike computer.

  • 0 8 days ago

    Ok so I just went and ran 5K quick and now the run activity HR zones match the cycling zones. Has Garmin recently changed the zone definitions and percent values or something? Suddenly what was normally my Z3 HR is now Z2 based on the default percentage values after resetting the zones to defaults.

    I can try manually setting the zone boundaries based on what I was used to, but it is a little concerning that the defaults / auto adjustments seem to not be behaving consistently with how they used to. Maybe I will have to suck it up and do a full hard reset...I think that I have received at least 10 FW updates since my last hard reset, and I do read about some people having issues that require a full wipe of the device.

  • 0 8 days ago

    Regarding your comment on what is necessary after a hard reset, read this post of mine. i always have a full dump of my device drive on my computer.

    forums.garmin.com/.../some-advice-before-upgrading-replacing-a-watch-or-a-hard-reset

  • 0 7 days ago in reply to S.M.R.

    Thank you, this is very helpful.

  • 0 6 days ago

    Hard reset done. HR zones are still different than they were before, but performance metrics are fine.

    Could it be that the default HR zone percentages were incorrect up until now? Previously, base runs would have me at 137BPM which was around the middle of Z3. Now, a base run at 137BPM is in the middle of Z2. I guess this is fine since almost all other zone-based training things have base runs in "Zone 2". Not a big deal.

    On the plus side, battery drain is definitely lower after the reset. One of the updates in the last several months had me losing 5-10% per day with no GPS usage, which was unfortunate since it was 1-2% before that. I seem to be back down in the low single digits again.

  • 0 6 days ago in reply to ZombieSloth

    Do have separate sport heart rates set up for running and cycling?

  • 0 3 days ago in reply to S.M.R.

    Nope, no activity specific settings. The “new” zones make a little more sense anyway, whether they are intentional or not lol. Gonna keep rolling with them and try not to worry too much since the actual performance metrics seem largely unaffected, other than a quirk in one of the bike metrics which seems to be evening out.

  • 0 2 days ago in reply to ZombieSloth

    I have done recently CPET test and there is explicitly mention that cycling zones should be 10 bpm lower than measured running ones and even 20 bpm less for swimming. Doctor has explained to me that those activities mainly utilize different muscles which has different blood requirements.

    In that case having dedicated Sport Heart Rate zones makes sense for me. All other activities will use default settings.

    But of course you can use one default for everything.

    In fact after this CPET test, I have manually entered zones and deactivated all automatic discoveries of HR Max, LTHR etc.