I wrote this in Italian in 2009, when I owned a Polar CS200. Readers kept thanking me in the comments, some of them in English and French, so it deserves an English version.

The CS100 and CS200 are cycling computers with a heart rate monitor. At some point you want to start from zero: maybe a new season, maybe you bought one used. Back then forums and manuals were confusing on how to do it, because there are two different resets and only one of them is in the menus.

Neither of them touches your settings. Heart rate limits, wheel size and the rest stay as they are.

Reset everything except the odometer

Go to Settings > Totals and press OK. It asks if you want to reset; press OK again. Trip averages, maximum speed and the other totals go back to zero.

The odometer (the total distance the bike has ever done) stays. The CS200 manual says it plainly: the odometer can only be reset with the UpLink.

Reset the odometer

The UpLink is a small Windows program, the Polar UpLink Tool, that talks to the cycling computer through sound. The PC plays a sequence of tones through its speakers and the CS200 picks them up. Polar calls this SonicLink. You need a computer with speakers or headphones, and a quiet room helps.

Polar no longer offers the UpLink Tool for download, so you’ll have to find a copy in a software archive. On a Mac, run it in a Windows virtual machine: I did, and it worked fine.

  1. Start the Polar UpLink Tool and pick your model (for example CS200). The Polar UpLink Tool asking for the model
  2. Turn on the cycling computer, go to Connect > Receive Data and leave it there.
  3. In the UpLink Tool, open the odometer tab and type the distance you want (0 for a clean start). There is one field per bike, since the CS200 keeps a separate odometer for two bikes. My copy was in Italian, so in the screenshot the tab reads “Odometro” and the button “Trasferisci”. The odometer tab of the UpLink Tool, with a field per bike and the transfer button Hold the cycling computer within 10 cm of the speakers and start the transfer. You’ll hear a strange sound. The transfer worked only if the display changes from “Receive Data” to “Uplink… OK” while the sound plays. If nothing changes, or it says “Uplink… Failed”, move it closer to the speakers and try again.
  4. Go back to the main screen (the one with date and time) and press and hold all three buttons at once, until every segment of the display lights up. The cycling computer restarts and asks only for the date and time. After that, the odometer shows the value you sent from the UpLink Tool.

Step 4 is where most people get stuck. One reader had to press two buttons with their fingers and the third against an edge. If the display stays full of symbols, press any button and it moves on.