Have had my watch about 18 months. For the first time I've started training to certain heart rate zones. Downloaded a plan from garmin connect. But the heart rate while I'm running is clearly wrong. When I am walking, it is showing me in zone 4 at times even if I'm not breaking sweat and when I'm sprinting I could be in zone 3... It is simply not correct. Any idea to troubleshoot? I'm wearing the watch tight to my wrist with my arm shaved to optimise the optical reading. It is extremely frustrating.
Dowdy - how have you established your zones in the first place? Do you think that your HR has been reading correctly in the past 18 months. As you'll see if you look in the Garmin forums and across other manufacturers forums optical HR particularly from the wrist is innaccurate for many activities for many people. To train using HR that rate does need to be reasonably accurate and currently the most reliable way to measure is to use a chest strap - this is almost certain to give a much more accurate reading in a whole range of activities
I have the 230 with HRM strap and just this week I've had 3 erratic readings while running. Wednesday and Thursday it spiked about 1 minute into a run for approx 4 mins then returned to normal. Today, Saturday it started fine but within 2.5 miles of a 20 mile run it spike and never returned to normal. I peaked out at 243bpm - going downhill!!
My HR zones have been accurately measured.
My strap is less than 1 year old as I had to purchase it at the Chicago Marathon expo.
