Guided Lactate Threshold Test entirely divorced from Max Heart Rate

I have been trying for some time to get the guided lactate threshold test to work for me. By way of background auto-detection on maximum heart rate has never worked for me. If turned on it sets at 203bpm. Following previous advice I've turned off auto-detection and lowered my max heart rate. This has got lower and lower as it hasn't helped to the point it is how set at 120bpm.

The heart rate bands on the GLT test stay exactly the same regardless of what my max heart rate is. They are, as follows:

4 mins - 142bpm to 162bpm

4 mins - 162bpm to 172bpm

4 mins - 172bpm to 182bpm

3 mins - 182bpm to 192bpm

3 mins - 192bpm to 203bpm

This is a problem as I can't hit those numbers (and if my max heart rate was really 120bpm I think it'd finish me off it if I managed it). My suspicion is that, while my max heart rate is showing as 120bpm or whatever it is set at t is remaining 203bpm in the background and cannot be changed.

I'd be grateful for any advice.

0 MatsR 29 days ago

Your maximum hear rate seems wrong, maybe you are only running very slow easy runs so 120 is the highest HR the watch has recently seen. You should try to establish your real max HR first and manually set that. You can try doing a 5 minute run all out and your max HR will likely be a few beats higher than your final HR. Max tests are very hard so it might be best to do this at a sports lab where you can also do a proper LT test.

If you are well trained your LT will be around 90% of max HR. I guess the watch thinks your max HR is 220 or something similar and have selected the intervals accordingly. Likely because your max HR is so low that the SW did not know how to handle it and default to some internal max instead.

0 SirHilli.II 29 days ago

You could check if there's a sport specific heart rate set.

If you are in the heart rate settings of the watch, swipe down to sports heartrates and see if there are different settings for running. If so, you need to change those, too

0 flocsy🤠 29 days ago

Check in Garmin connect (and also on the watch) whether you have only the general heart rate zones+max hr, or maybe you also have a Running(or other sport) hr zones+max HR set up. I suspect you might have a sport heart rate zone set and you only changed it in the general setting while left it on 203 for the sport.

Also something seems to be VERY strange with your max hr. I mean having 10 or even 20% or BPM difference between what you and Garmin think is not unheard of, but a difference if 83?!

If I were you I would be concerned about this because either there's a serious problem with your watch and would require a replacement, or I would be concerned that maybe there's some rare, serious heart condition involved that the watch can't cope with.

0 tropicaljones 29 days ago in reply to SirHilli.II

You're a genius. This is it. I've no idea how that got set but it's there.