Are you sure? I mean these gadgets flip out all the time, mine is so inaccurate it is a joke to use it as any indication of something gone awry.

Did you feel anything wrong? And keep in mind the average athlete has like 100 to 200 PVC's a day anyway, so could have been one of those too.

Until you have something sustained(longer than 2 seconds) and you actually feel something wonky, I wouldn't worry about it. Get your usual check ups and just keep track a little more closely now..

I have the same question as Monty. i wouldn't put ANY stock in a 2s reading from a consumer HRM...including any chest straps. that goes double while indoors. Even my Polar H10 strap (paired with Garmin F6) looses its mind indoors every once in a while. I don't know if its from 2.4 GHz interference or something else. But, it does fine outside....indoors at least once a week it goes haywire (100 or 190 indicated instead of 150 true) for 30s or more....long enough for me to take a manual pulse reading and go "nope, that ain't right".

You say that you "felt it"...what does that mean, exactly? That's like 4 heart beats.

Thank you for commenting above....yep definately felt a "thump thump thump thump" then it went away, mind you I was mashing the pedals. I felt completely normal after my spin (and hungry as hell lol) and feel normal now. I will definately keep an eye and on this moving forward. Reallly appreciate this site you guys are the best!

Tom

Not to scare you but back in November I was having moments of high HR on my garmin. It was happening randomly, but multiple times over a few weeks. I even bought a new HR strap and same thing. Then...BAM, I went into Afib. Thats a longer story but I had to be cardioverted, then a month later had a Catheter Ablation. Now almost 60 days post surgery I am back to full fitness (actually better).

My advice to you when you see this is when done with your workout go into the ECG Ap (on Garmin watch) and verify that you are in Sinus Rhythm.

Similar situation for me. 7 years ago, I started noticing occasional blips, lasting 2-5 seconds. Some of these I felt, usually like I briefly had the wind knocked out of me. If I felt something, I'd note the mileage and after uploading to Strava there would be a huge spike right at that point.



These started happening more often, and my cardiologist scheduled a stress echo. The night before the test, I went into persistent afib. I was put on medication for several months, which was only partially successful at controlling it, and finally my insurance OK'd an ablation, which took care of the problem...

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"I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10, and I don't know why!"

Ok, if you felt it then....As the others mentioned short-term, Afib is certainly a possibility, but there are others. Like them, I also had bouts of afib it after I had heart surgery....however, it is no longer an issue for me since fully healing around 3 months after surgery.

I would certainly discuss it with your Dr. and decide if more tests are warranted to determine the underlying type of arythmia you may be experiencing. There are several, and some are not so benign.

Based on all this great feedback I am going to buy a portable ECG device. I am very curious to see what it reports after an intense workout. I will also contact my doctor.

Thanks guys!

I have the Kardia 6L---as was recommended by by Cardiologist. It works well at resting heart rates. I've had a difficult time getting readings at exercise heart rates. But, I still carry it with me in my bag.

Yes I just ordered the Kardia 6L on Amazon, its due tomorrow! I even used my FSA card lol !

So todays training was a treadmill run with intervals. Warmed up for 15 minutes before running hard and used my Garmin Tri HRM connected to my 945 watch. I didn’t have any HR irregularities or anything like yesterday. Didn’t feel anything out of the norm either. The Kardia6L showed up today so posting the result….normal as I was hoping. I will still contact my PCP and keep a very close eye on this. I have 6 events this year between running and triathlon starting up soon. I also did a lot of reading on the entire topic last evening and understand this could, if it reoccurs develop into AFib or another arrythmia.


I cannot thank those who commented above enough, thank you for helping me understand what may have happened with my HR yesterday. Which BTW looking at the data was a 12 second spike from 137 to 150 then back to 137 and I could feel it in my chest so really appreciate everyone’s input.

Tom

I use the 1l Kardia mobile and check it every morning. The cardiologist tells me my garmin isn’t sensitive enough to catch all that is going on with my heart. Currently I am waiting on a pacemaker implant early April.

The heart can definitely be a puzzle to solve. In a pre-op for shoulder surgery they discovered my atrial were racing at 300 beats per minute (atrial flutter). Garmin showed my resting HR to be in the mid 30s. They did an ablation last June to correct it but during the surgery I went into afib. I wore a holster monitor for a month. I did a hard indoor bike workout and noticed an erratic hr and thought it was just bad reading from my strap. Turns out I was in afib. My garmin read 45 beats per minute resting. That’s when the cardiologist suggested I get a Kardia mobile.

Fast forward to this January and I noticed I could not get enough ox when running. My Kardia mobile suggested possible afib. I sent the file to the cardiologist and they ordered an ecg but by the time they did it I was out of afib. Two weeks later same thing happened but this time on my indoor trainer. This time the ecg caught my afib but also my hr was 50. They ordered a 24 hour holster monitor and found a had a grade two AV block which had progressed from a grade one block over the past five months. That’s where the signal from the atrial to the ventricle gets blocked for several seconds . Grade three is a complete block and can cause heart failure. Garmin during this time shows a resting hr of 38 to 40 and a balance HRV. The pacemaker will increase my resting hr to something that allows better blood ox flow and keep me out of heart failure when I progress to grade 3 av block.

All that being said it is good as you see concerning things pop up to get it checked and have a good baseline established with your cardiologist. Turns out according to both my grandfather and great grandfathers death certificates cause of death was ventricular afib….that was in 1959 and 1925. We have progressed substantially since then but at 68….my genes are starting to show their ugly head in spite of years of endurance training:-(

Do you have an ECG on your Garmin, or did your Doc just mean you aren't going to catch anything by looking at HR? I always figured the watch based ECGs were as good as the Kardia 1L's.

I had weird cardio stuff going on about two years ago now. Went to a Cardio Doc and they had me wear a holter monitor for a couple of days to see if they could catch it. First couple of days I was a little cautious, but the last day I really wanted to see if I could trigger something so they could generate a diagnosis. Strapped the monitor down with K-Tape so it wouldn't bounce around and did maxed out one minute intervals. It is sort of weird to try to push yourself so hard that your heart starts to have issues. But no such luck. They never saw a thing. A month or two later I finally had another event and whipped out my Kardia to get a recording. Good enough to get a diagnosis of AVNRT. The Doc said it wasn't a real issue and we are going to leave it alone unless it starts to get bothersome.

I had a very similar experience about 2 years ago. Heart shot to 230 for about 5-10 seconds while I was soft peddling at the end of a race. I had just about every test run afterwards. Echo, EKG, stress test & MRI. Everything came back negative. Since then I started use a Fourth Frontier rate monitor. It will give you a 2 lead ekg. If nothing more it's helped ease any anxiety I have when I think I feel something, but nothing shows up on the ekg afterwards.

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There is no way watch based ecg will ever be as good as a kardia or similar device...even the 1L, let alone the 6L. It's just not possible with a single wrist contact point.

They have a few options... The one I use is the 2 lead chest strap. It's not perfect by any means, but it doe's give a little bit of information and piece of mind.

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That's not "watch based" aka garmin or apple watch ecg function.

I have worn holter monitors, and realtime recording monitors.

The point is that its actually necessary to take measurements ACROSS the chest to get accurate ecg. Anything single sided will always be worse.

Watch based ECG's use two contact points: the wrist of the arm the watch is on and the other hand. So no different than the Kardia 1L. Just need to be a little more careful you don't make a shortcut.

Before you get worked up:

1) What's the ratio between relatively harmless arrhythmia's and serious arrhythmia's?

It might be that there are lots and lots of people with harmless arrhythmia's.
And far fewer people with harm

2) What percentage of people experience harmless arrhythmia's on a rare basis?

It might be almost everyone .

Personal:
I have PAC/PVC's.
I have always had them.
Weirdly- they are becoming fewer and less intense with age.
I might not notice or think too much about them if it wasn't for endurance sports.
I wouldn't have gotten too worked up about them if it wasn't for reading too many alarmist threads about heart issues on Slowtwitch.

I did get officially diagnosed by a cardiologist. And I learnt some valuable things.

So, a little extra concern led to valuable knowledge.

Either I'm confused or you are. I never said anything about anything being "watch based" so I'm not sure what your point is or what you're arguing. I said the one I use (the one on the website I linked) is a 2 lead chest strap.

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Once is the same as never.

Yeah...sorry. I originally was responding to Torrey and didn't catch the change in username (in the replies) to you.

 Phew.. crisis averted, haha. I was very lost.

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I have a Fenix 6 with only hr not ecg. The Dr said it isn’t sensitive enough to catch changes to my heart and only monitors pulse from the ventricles.

I did the same with the Holter Monitor. I didn’t go into a-fib while wearing the monitor the second time doing hard workouts, but that’s where they saw the AV block progression from grade 1 (when I wore the monitor following my flutter ablation) to 2 with a heart rate goes into the mid 30s at night. With the afib he said since it isn’t a frequently occurring episode and I resolve it myself he wants to hold off on doing any ablations until and if it becomes more frequent.

They will place the pacemaker leads in the ventricles to prevent heart failure and he said with a higher more consistent heart rate I should feel better when I work out. FYI….I go to MAYO and my Dr was trained and worked at their sports cardiology clinic in Rochester MN.

Slightly different story but does anyone think this is a problem?

I realize that the max HR calculation (for me aged 69, 220 - age = 151) is a crude approximation, so I wasn't shocked when I seemed to top out around 167, regularly.
Seemed reasonable considering I've led an athletic life.

Just lately however, I've had some spikes up to 180-90, sustained for up to a minute. It rises gradually and drops quicker, evening out depending on the following effort.
As a result, I now keep an eye on it when I'm putting in a major effort, but it's not consistent.

On a big effort yesterday It rose to 181 for about a minute, 30 minutes later it did the same on a relatively easy high Z2 effort (I wasn't breathing hard, my heart didn't feel like it was racing).
On other occasions I was going up a fairly solid hill almost willing it to go up and it just just sat on 155.

My 2 HR monitor chest straps get the same results. The first, Garmin dedicated, old, the second, new, "works" with all receivers, made by Powerlabs. I'm looking for a cheap wrist based HR watch so I can compare 2 HRs simultaneously.

BTW About 4 years ago I indulged myself with a Heart stress test on a treadmill, I know it's regarded as by no means 100% conclusive but they found nothing.

Any ideas. Are these AFib symptoms? I'm resigned to having more tests. I've got about 5 medical issues in process already. I love Medicare!