Apple Watch - How to show heartrate while biking

I have "Always On" turned on, and indeed, the watch doesn't turn off. But there seems to be some kind of intermediary mode where it doesn't display the same level of detail when I put my wrist down. This is extremely annoying when biking, because I can see my watch face, but it won't update anything but the minutes and seconds. I need that feedback to keep in the active zone I want to be in, but I have to pull the watch up to my face to get the heartrate activity to show up!

I know it's a problem with whatever this intermediary state is because I can still see the seconds ticking along, but not the milliseconds. As soon as I raise my arm, the milliseconds come back in the app.

Is there a way to get "Always On" to be more like "Always pretend like my arm is raise"?