hr zones recording incorrectly

Do you have only the general hr zones setup or did you also set hr zones for the running? It might have different zones

My guess was that they have a general HR zone setting (with zone 3 119-135) and a running HR zone setting (something else) and thus when they run then 139 isn't in zone 4 but in zone zone 3

But again, when you look at the HR time in zone chart for an activity in Connect, I think that the chart is based on the zone settings for that activity (the settings that existed at the time the activity was recorded and for that type of activity.) Afaik, this include both calculated time in zone, and the bpm range for each zone. (The ranges are displayed right on the chart in the Connect website and app).

You can validate what I'm saying by recording an activity, then temporarily changing your HR zone settings for that sport to something completely different. If I'm right, then when you look at the activity, the time in zones chart for that activity will still reflect your original zones.

I can see for myself when I look at a years old activity where my zones where somehow configured with my max HR as 54 (I forget if I did this as a test.) Clearly each activity stores its own HR zones definition.

OP said "On the HR zone charts my zone 3 is 119 -135 bpm", which I took to mean the time in zones chart in the activity detail. It's a lot less likely they were referring to HR zone settings on their device.

flocsy🤠 said:

My guess was that they have a general HR zone setting (with zone 3 119-135) and a running HR zone setting (something else) and thus when they run then 139 isn't in zone 4 but in zone zone 3

Yeah I understood what you were getting at. But my point is that based on the fact that the activity chart is supposed to reflect your zones at the time the activity was recorded, this doesn't make sense unless there is a bug, which is what they were trying to say.

If their running HR zones were set up such that zone 3 is not 119-135, but some range includes 139, then that range is what should've been displayed on the activity chart for zone 3, *not* 119-135 as they explicitly said.

To be clear they're saying their activity HR time in zones chart looks something like this:

Zone 5: (?-?) 0:00
Zone 4: (136-?) 0:00
Zone 3 (119-135): 34:00
Zone 2 (?-119): 1:00
Zone 1 (?-?): 0:00

I have to agree that this seems wrong, given that the average HR is reported as 139. It's mathematically impossible.

If you are trying to say that the chart is displaying one set of HR zones, but in fact a different set of zones was actually used, then that's still a bug, not a misconfiguration or misunderstanding.

So to be clear, if you open an activity file in https://www.fitfileviewer.com/, there's a whole Time In Zone section which captures your zones *at the time the activity was recorded* (assuming your device supports time in zones).

e.g.

That's why the following explanation doesn't make sense (in the absence of a bug):

flocsy🤠 said:

Do you have only the general hr zones setup or did you also set hr zones for the running? It might have different zones

flocsy🤠 said:

My guess was that they have a general HR zone setting (with zone 3 119-135) and a running HR zone setting (something else) and thus when they run then 139 isn't in zone 4 but in zone zone 3

Let's say their running HR zone 3 was actually 119-150 (just to make up a range). In that case, that's what should've been recorded to the FIT file and displayed in Garmin Connect. But according to OP, the "HR Zone charts" show that zone 3 is 119-135. This can only refer to the time in zone chart in the activity itself.

So what exactly would "it might have different zones" mean in this context? The activity might have different zones than the settings? Yeah, that's possible, but that's not what OP is said at all. OP didn't actually mention their HR zone settings. OP said that the time in zones in the activity (given the zone 3 range, also recorded in the activity) is inconsistent with the average HR, also in the activity. Given that all of those things are recorded in the activity file itself, I would expect them to all be consistent.

So in the absence of any other information, I'd say this sounds like a bug. I would probably reach out to Garmin support. Maybe they can took a look the FIT file. Either that or post the activity so we can look at it. (Although I doubt there's much we could do except confirm it's a bug.)