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Anyone Put Their Garmin in Their Swimcap for Pool Swims?
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Just as the title states. Is there a way to make this work? I'm really bad about entering my swims into TP so automating it would be awesome. I just hate swimming with a watch on. I have a 920xt fwiw.
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Re: Anyone Put Their Garmin in Their Swimcap for Pool Swims? [GreenPlease] [ In reply to ]
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FWIW that was SOP for open water swimming back in the days of the 305XT because that watch wasn't waterproof. Lots of people were doing it and it worked fine. Pool swim may confuse the accelerometers and it may miss flipturns. Try it once and see what you get.
Last edited by: Dilbert: May 14, 17 9:03
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Re: Anyone Put Their Garmin in Their Swimcap for Pool Swims? [GreenPlease] [ In reply to ]
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Pretty sure it needs to count like 3 strokes to count a pool length. I know it is off when I do 1 arm drills. So if it never sees a stroke, pretty sure it'll be off.
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Re: Anyone Put Their Garmin in Their Swimcap for Pool Swims? [GreenPlease] [ In reply to ]
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Obviously it won't get your stroke count numbers if that's important to you but the accelerometer might do all right since it should still understand your change in direction.
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Re: Anyone Put Their Garmin in Their Swimcap for Pool Swims? [GreenPlease] [ In reply to ]
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The GPS will be way off, as it's going to miss where the turns are. The accelerometers might get the lap count (just the strokes will be wrong). Try it, but not in ows mode.

You might also consider the first gen vivoactive. It's a lot thinner/smaller and can be had for ~$50 on eBay.

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Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
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Re: Anyone Put Their Garmin in Their Swimcap for Pool Swims? [Titanflexr] [ In reply to ]
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I'm not worried about stroke length, just lap count/total distance. I suppose I'll just try it this afternoon to see how it does.
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Re: Anyone Put Their Garmin in Their Swimcap for Pool Swims? [GreenPlease] [ In reply to ]
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Is there a reason you're doing this, as opposed to just putting the 920 on your wrist?

As stated above, the only reason people used to do that is that the 305 wasn't designed for swimming and they wanted an open water swim track. The 920 is both designed for swimming and accurate in the pool.
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Re: Anyone Put Their Garmin in Their Swimcap for Pool Swims? [GreenPlease] [ In reply to ]
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I hate swimming with tri watches. The Garmin Swim is perfect for pool training because it's low profile. https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/97287

Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/
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Re: Anyone Put Their Garmin in Their Swimcap for Pool Swims? [timbasile] [ In reply to ]
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timbasile wrote:
Is there a reason you're doing this, as opposed to just putting the 920 on your wrist?

As stated above, the only reason people used to do that is that the 305 wasn't designed for swimming and they wanted an open water swim track. The 920 is both designed for swimming and accurate in the pool.

I absolutely hate swimming with a watch on my wrist.
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Re: Anyone Put Their Garmin in Their Swimcap for Pool Swims? [GreenPlease] [ In reply to ]
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If you have been swimming long enough you can probably guess within 100m how long your workout was. Just look at the time you enter the water and leave. Guestimate your stops and guestimate how much was kick and drills. The actual swimming, you'll know your pace and rest times (or you'll know your send off times). This might be less work than mucking around with your watch and putting it in your cap etc etc. At the end of the day, it's really not that important for future training planning if you did 100m or even 300m more or less over an hour of this swim vs that swim, vs the other. Just knowing if you were at the pool and going "hard, medium, easy" for 30/45/60/90 minutes provides enough of a picture from a physiology angle. Micro recording down to the meter and so on is meaningless as far at the body is concerned. You could do an hour of fly and breast, or an hour equally hard with a pull buoy and wetsuit and paddles (like the swim-run guys), and literally do 50% more meters in the second set up, but physiology wise, both workouts might be identical in terms of workload/TSS. So meters can end up being a bit misleading. This is why XC skiers generally measure training load at a macro level in hours, since you could cover anywhere from 25 kph down to 6-8 kph depending on terrain, technique and conditions.

I would not worry too much about the meters. You're going to be pretty darn close on an estimate.

I agree on hating swimming with a watch on. Just feels totally off.
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Re: Anyone Put Their Garmin in Their Swimcap for Pool Swims? [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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Oh I could guess and be close enough... I'm just too lazy to enter it into TP :) I have everything but my swim set up for auto sync.
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Re: Anyone Put Their Garmin in Their Swimcap for Pool Swims? [GreenPlease] [ In reply to ]
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OK, I got it. I forgot the auto sync aspect! On a plus note we can believe your training log since it is all recorded, vs the training log inflation factor LOL!
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Re: Anyone Put Their Garmin in Their Swimcap for Pool Swims? [GreenPlease] [ In reply to ]
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I do 100 m (4 lenghts) kick drills on my back, no board, arms straight ahead, and flip off the wall. My 910 does no see the flip. It just records the time as a 0 length interval.

At least on the 910, if it doesn't sense a stroke it doesn't sense anything else.

"...the street finds its own uses for things"
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Re: Anyone Put Their Garmin in Their Swimcap for Pool Swims? [GreenPlease] [ In reply to ]
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no because my husband can't even get the garmin to work on his fucking arm, leg, or any other part of his body. 2 920's and 2 910's and now the Fenix. does not work either. he is on Garmin's do not return his calls list.
Last edited by: timberdick: May 15, 17 4:01
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Re: Anyone Put Their Garmin in Their Swimcap for Pool Swims? [GreenPlease] [ In reply to ]
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Just put it in drill mode and enter your yardage at the end of your workout.
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Re: Anyone Put Their Garmin in Their Swimcap for Pool Swims? [JoelO] [ In reply to ]
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JoelO wrote:
Just put it in drill mode and enter your yardage at the end of your workout.

This would be the only way. It won't register in regular mode without at least three or four good strokes.

On the arm it works really well. I might miss 25 out of 10000 meters.

Without the arm though, it'll only work in drill mode and you'll have to track the distance.
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Re: Anyone Put Their Garmin in Their Swimcap for Pool Swims? [BryanD] [ In reply to ]
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Yes... The idea of wearing a watch while swimming isn't that appealing, but I lose count so much doing long, unbroken swims that it's almost become necessary. (That being said...I tried the Garmin Swim a few times and I can't tell who lost count more often, me or it...)

I did some research on different waterproof fitness trackers, and the FINIS wearable was like wearing a brick on your wrist. Which seemed like an odd design choice given that these guys are usually "with it" when it comes to designing swim gear.

Going to give the Speedo/MisFit swim wearable a go later this week. It's super slim, really light, and hopefully accurate.

Semi-pro halfer...
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Re: Anyone Put Their Garmin in Their Swimcap for Pool Swims? [GreenPlease] [ In reply to ]
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i always swim with my garmin 920 but it doesn't necessarily track the correct distance. If i'm swimming in a 50 meter pool, the distance can be overstated by up to 1000 meters, however in a 25 meter pool, it usually comes in very close.

All my workouts are auto synced to TP, however if my Garmin widely overstates the distance, i will delete the workout from the 920 before i get home. i write all my workouts out so I know what distance I supposed to be swimming.
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Re: Anyone Put Their Garmin in Their Swimcap for Pool Swims? [ptakeda] [ In reply to ]
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ptakeda wrote:
i always swim with my garmin 920 but it doesn't necessarily track the correct distance. If i'm swimming in a 50 meter pool, the distance can be overstated by up to 1000 meters, however in a 25 meter pool, it usually comes in very close.

All my workouts are auto synced to TP, however if my Garmin widely overstates the distance, i will delete the workout from the 920 before i get home. i write all my workouts out so I know what distance I supposed to be swimming.

What are you doing such that it is this wrong? Neither my 920 nor my 935, aside from a few incidents with bad turns, or weird accelerations, has had any trouble calculating proper swim distances. Like literally I think the devices have messed up maybe 5 times over 500+ workouts.
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Re: Anyone Put Their Garmin in Their Swimcap for Pool Swims? [GreenPlease] [ In reply to ]
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It would not get your lap count and total distance, since it requires the stroke count (arm movement). When doing kick board drills or doing one arm drills (With the watch arm being the un-used one) it will not count the laps. So I am fairly sure it will need the arm movement plus the wall push-off to count your laps.
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Re: Anyone Put Their Garmin in Their Swimcap for Pool Swims? [ptakeda] [ In reply to ]
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That is weird. To me it sounds like the pool length settings are wrong in some manner, or I have found if I am doing a workout where I suddenly slow down in the middle of a lap it sometimes counts an extra lap.
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Re: Anyone Put Their Garmin in Their Swimcap for Pool Swims? [noofus] [ In reply to ]
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noofus wrote:
ptakeda wrote:
i always swim with my garmin 920 but it doesn't necessarily track the correct distance. If i'm swimming in a 50 meter pool, the distance can be overstated by up to 1000 meters, however in a 25 meter pool, it usually comes in very close.

All my workouts are auto synced to TP, however if my Garmin widely overstates the distance, i will delete the workout from the 920 before i get home. i write all my workouts out so I know what distance I supposed to be swimming.


What are you doing such that it is this wrong? Neither my 920 nor my 935, aside from a few incidents with bad turns, or weird accelerations, has had any trouble calculating proper swim distances. Like literally I think the devices have messed up maybe 5 times over 500+ workouts.

no idea, its weird it only happens when i change to 50 m pool.
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