Good morning all, Luckily enough, I am injured, so i tried my hand at some pool running at the weekend. In order to assess effort, i would like to be able to see (and record) my HR live while in the water. I use the HRM Tri, and for some reason, as soon as i get in the water, my live HR disappears, never to return until i get out. I thought the thing worked under water? I seem to recall, from lap swimming days, while i never noticed whether the HR data was live (too busy swimming!) i noticed the data would be 'uploaded' at the end, once the activity was finished, but this doesn't seem to happen anymore. From a 20 min 'pool run', according to GC on my mobile device, i have only 5 mins of data, despite the run being 20mins.
So in short: i) can i get 'live' HR data while in the pool? ii) can i get 'recorded' HR data, post work out?
Surely ii) is possible - i'm not sure what i am doing wrong to stop it happening?
Place watch against HRM-Tri pod whilst underwater and you will get a live HR reading. Stop at end of pool, place watch and strap in air and you will get a live reading along with current set readings.
Thank you TrippyZ. I'm not sure i follow. What do you mean 'place watch against' ? You mean ensure they're paired? If i get in the pool with a live HR reading (i.e. all is fine), and start the activity, the live HR figure disappears after 3 or 4 seconds, never to return until i get out of the water. Is it not possible to get a live reading continually while underwater? Regarding my activity, it looks ok in GC (on the web) but on GCM (on my phone) only 5:05 shows of >20mins in total. https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/3170285842 John.
ANT+ radio waves do not travel through water. This means that to see your current HR on the watch from the strap, you need either both your watch and strap to be above water surface, or bring your watch to the strap sensor really close (like, less than an inch) when underwater. There is no other option.
ii) can i get 'recorded' HR data, post work out?
I don't know why the watch does not give you the download option automatically after the swim, but you can get it later as well. On your watch, go into history, enter your recorded activity, and there you'll find the option to download HR. Please remember, that for that option to work, you need to wear the strap, because otherwise it could go into sleep mode, and won't allow the download.
Thank you both. I tried an experiment last night and selected 'treadmill run' instead of swim. Strangely, i got a live reading for the whole pool run... but it seemed only to look realistic during my warm up and cool down (targeting c. 140-150HR) whereas during the 'workout' parts (basically the whole middle section, targeting 160-170HR), my data fell sharply to c. 100HR, which definitely wasn't right (i'm usally 100-110HR just walking around). So i'm not sure what happened, particularly given it seemed to work well at low-exertion efforts, at the beginning and end. Clearly the underlying software algorithms for capturing HR data are different when it swim vs run modes...and probably for good reason. https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/3176831605 Has anyone any ideas? Feels like this is progress at least. (or if the data is completely unreliable, perhaps it isn't at all) John
I tried an experiment last night and selected 'treadmill run' instead of swim. Strangely, i got a live reading for the whole pool run..
The reading was coming from the optical sensor. When you select a swimming profile, the optical sensor turns off, because garmin thinks it's unreliable in water, but when you select a different profile, the optical sensor remains on, and that explains why you get a reading even though the external strap is not connected due to water obscuring radio connection.
