DaveWC

My Garmin 500 often screws up my heart rate data during the start of my ride. I've made sure the thing is moistened properly and usually it works. But on the odd day that it doesn't it will show my hr as 245+ and fluctuate around there for minutes. While it doesn't matter much on the ride, as I know it's incorrect, it does screw up some data when I import it after the ride. For Garmin, the only data it seems to affect is the max & avg heart rate & heart rate graph, but I can live with that. For Golden Cheetah it also affects the TRIMP points which screws up the PM graph if you base it on TRIMP.

I know I can manually change the heart rate levels but I don't want to do that for each second that it screws up. On one ride alone there were over 240 instances that it was completely off. I've found a work around by exporting the data into a PWX file, fixing the data programmatically and then reimporting it and deleting the bad data. It works, takes a few seconds, the TRIMP is correct and the PM chart is good. Is this problem unique to my Garmin? Do others have this problem & just ignore it?

gregf83 

It's not the garmin 500 it's a combination of your strap the humidity and the jersey your wearing. I see high HR often during the start of a ride if I wear a loose jersey. Once I've been riding for a while and sweating it goes away. When I spent some time in Cranbrook in a much drier climate the problem was worse.

You might try a base layer and a tighter jersey or do what I do and just look at power and ignore HR.

achoo

Wet - not moisten - your HR strap before your ride starts.

saintsfaninks26

I have had this same experience at the beginning of rides but mine will also sometimes show an outrageous climb percentage at the beginning of a ride. Like trying to tell me my flat street has a 114% grade.

I just ignore it.