The first thing that I planned on mentioning here is simply that the settings for Heart-Rate Zones in the Garmin 800 GPS Bike computer are not where you might expect them to be.

Garmin Edge 800

I have had my Garmin 800 GPS unit for a couple of years now and have not reset the heart-rate zones since I got it. Well, since these zones are mostly based on age I knew that they were out of date and decided to reset them.

I’m sure this information is in the manual somewhere and I obviously had checked that when I first set it but it is NOT intuitive and was not where I expected it to be.

It seemed logical to me that you would set the heart-rate zones in the > User Profile section but that is not where you make the setting. You actually change the heart-rate settings in > Bike Settings (then down arrow) > Heart Rate.

The User Profile includes Gender, Age, Weight, Height and Activity Class. Since I could not find the heart-rate setting at first I thought that changing these parameters might change your heart-rate zones (seemed logical to me anyway).

So I made some changes here and went out for a ride to check my new 90% workout zone. I expected a change since I changed my age and activity class (from 45 min workout time a week to 1 to 3 hours per week which is much closer for me (if not even a little low).

HR Strap

Next I go out to my first hill and push myself up to the 90% zone and check my heart-rate. Well, it was exactly the same as it was before. So just to check the settings I set my User profile to a 20 Year old, 150 lbs and workout time of over 15 hours a week!

So I find the next hill and start racing again to get my heart-rate up. No change… Well I tried resetting the trip setting then turning the unit off completely and on again… Another hill… another 90%+ heart-rate… No change!!!

OK, I finally decided that this information made no difference in the unit’s heart-rate zones and was totally exhausted after my ride.

BTW: You can set the heart-rate zones as I described above but the only way to see where how they are actually set (the heart-beat rates) you need to go out and ride and see what happens.

Anyway, when you track down where to make the heart-rate changes ~ under > Bike Settings (then down arrow) > Heart Rate > Heart Rate Zones. ~ you can set your Maximum HR, Resting HR and the method that you want to use to calculate the rates for each zone.

This lead me into a little more research on calculating Maximum Heart-Rate and decided to change my calculation from the easy and popular method (220 – your age) to what I believe may be a little more accurate formula that I found on the Wikipedia Heart Rate page.

I am now using the Robergs and Landwehr method where: HRmax = 205.8 − (0.685 × age)

They say you really need to do a Stress Test to get an accurate Max HR but, since I am not going to go out and pay for a stress test just to get my max hr, I like the method above since it yields a little higher ranges (than the 220-age method) and I think that fits me a little better.

When I originally got my Edge 800 I mostly wanted to upgrade my bike computer and even thought that the navigation would be really cool. I wasn’t that interested in the Heart-Rate monitor but I have since found this to be one of the features that I use the most with this unit.

I still love this GPS bike computer and all of its features. For a little more information specifically on the Edge 800 see our Garmin Edge 800 page on this site.