Form recently announced the addition of a feature I have been dying to get ever since I bought the v1 goggles: real time pace during open water swimming, based on smartwatch GPS data.
Sadly, it doesn’t seem to work at all. When swimming a fairly consistent 1:40/100y pace, well-tracked by my Garmin, the new data field always displays something in the range of “0:29” through “0:36”. It does vary up and down a bit seemingly in line with pace variations, but always perhaps 1:10 faster than reality.
Anybody else seeing this after getting the latest updates? The “workout pace” field continues to function correctly, showing accurate ~1:40 figure.
The announcement blog post goes out of its way to state that the real time pace metric comes directly from the watch with no postprocessing. I wonder if they are aware of the bug but see it as something wrong on the Garmin side.
Sadly, it doesn’t seem to work at all. When swimming a fairly consistent 1:40/100y pace, well-tracked by my Garmin, the new data field always displays something in the range of “0:29” through “0:36”. It does vary up and down a bit seemingly in line with pace variations, but always perhaps 1:10 faster than reality.
Are you doing this in a pool to test it or open water? Are you wearing the watch on the same arm that you breathe towards and is the side of the googles with the computer box?
Open water, with clear GPS signal and accurate track. I know how to wear the goggles, no connection issues. Like I said, the “workout pace” field is fine, it’s just the new “real time pace” that’s way off.
The one test I haven’t done is to set up “pace” as a data field on the watch and confirm what’s shown there as I’m swimming. If the watch shows the same bogus value, that’s obviously Garmin’s bug, not Form’s.
Provided my connection to the watch is stable and the GPS signal good, I’ve had the pace data show me reasonably accurate information. This is with the recent updates. Prior to that, I rarely saw anything other than watch disconnected. I still get a number of disconnects over the course of a 30 - 60 minute swim but I’ve found that’s often because I favor wearing my watch and the sensor on the opposite side as the one I prefer to breath on. A few intervals of breathing on the same side as watch and sensor typically restores the connection. I do not see pace information as wildly off as you do. Do you have the distance set to display as well? Might be worth turning that on the see what is reported and in line with the pace/time data being displayed.
I’ve used mine for about a dozen open water swims, including one race, and had zero issues, pace display was fine. Connecting to an Apple Watch for GPS.
I just used this feature for the first time and had the exact same problem. I was swimming at around a 1:50 pace and was getting a :39/per 100 from the goggles. GPS signal was fine and my garmin had the correct pace just not displaying in the goggles.
I just used this feature for the first time and had the exact same problem. I was swimming at around a 1:50 pace and was getting a :39/per 100 from the goggles. GPS signal was fine and my garmin had the correct pace just not displaying in the goggles.
Ok, good to know that I’m not crazy and this is affecting others as well.
I tried another test “swim” by running the OWS activity while walking down the street near my house. Interestingly, the watch and the goggles both showed a consistent, credible real-time pace. I’m not sure why it worked fine that time but not the two times I’ve tried it while actually swimming. Maybe something to do with the connection quality in the water (seems unlikely given that all other fields are working fine), or GPS quirks in the particular place I go swimming?
Tested in actual open water again tonight. First time running instantaneous pace data field on the watch as well as the goggles during actual swimming.
The watch (Garmin Forerunner 965) appears to be the culprit – it was showing the same bogus instantaneous pace value as the goggles. The goggles were just faithfully reporting that value from the watch. At the very beginning of the swim the watch showed a credible value, but the other times I peeked, it showed 0:3X/100y.
Sorry for initially blaming Form without doing enough testing.
I have some faith that a smaller company like Form will be responsive to customer bug reports. Much lower expectations for Garmin, assuming I can even find the right place to report the issue.
Tested in actual open water again tonight. First time running instantaneous pace data field on the watch as well as the goggles during actual swimming.
The watch (Garmin Forerunner 965) appears to be the culprit – it was showing the same bogus instantaneous pace value as the goggles. The goggles were just faithfully reporting that value from the watch. At the very beginning of the swim the watch showed a credible value, but the other times I peeked, it showed 0:3X/100y.
Sorry for initially blaming Form without doing enough testing.
I have some faith that a smaller company like Form will be responsive to customer bug reports. Much lower expectations for Garmin, assuming I can even find the right place to report the issue.
Are you wearing the watch on your wrist? Obviously GPS and being under water doesn’t go hand in hand so there will always be funky values in real time even if the overall distance/time/pace works out fine albeit ‘choppy’ (excuse the pun).
I know a lot of people who put their watch in the back of their swim cap or swim buoy to keep the watch out of the water to get more accurate data. Worth a shot?
I appreciate the suggestions here and in other replies, but I think they are kind of missing the point.
The watch is able to track time and distance throughout the swim, without a problem. I see the distance metric ticking up at a consistent rate throughout my swims, and when I review the track later on the map it always looks quite good. So GPS connectivity is clearly good enough.
If you have time and distance, this should be all that’s needed in order to derive average and “instant” pace metrics.
Average pace = total time / total distance
Instant pace = N sec / (total distance - total distance N sec ago), for some value of N. Maybe N = 30ish?
Something very weird is happening given that average pace always looks exactly right, but instant pace is always off by a factor of 2-3x. Garmin must be using a totally different heuristic for instant pace.
I’m just looking back over some swims I did a few weeks ago. I did a 1400m OWS in the ocean with my Garmin on my wrist. Overall pace 2:10/100m and GPS map looks pretty reasonable. Even when looking at the pace analysis it seems fine (up and down but nothing drastic).
However, when I deep dive a bit more I notice that for the 1400m (31min) there is actually only 28 points of GPS data. Not sure if this relates to only updating every 50m or if it’s a bit of a coincidence and just updates when it can. Like you, I viewed the distance ticking up in single digit metres on the watch and not just every 50m. So I’m not exactly sure how these 2 things work together because I definitely don’t have single digit GPS data point updates
I got exactly the same problem! With the 965. I am swimming at 1:40-pace, but the real-time is showing 0:29-0:33. I had the same problem with my 935, but not with my 945… I have tried various pace-options on the 965 too…
For me it’s the opposite.
I use a Forerunner 255 with Multiband GPS active, watch is under the swim cap and I use Form goggles. So everything should be perfect but it shows extremely slow times like 2:20/100 where I swim 1:35 in the pool consistently.
I then cross checked with Google Maps and it doesn’t even remotely capture the correct distance.
Watch 131m
Google Maps 150m
Also I didn’t stop in this part but it captured parts of me with 4:00 pace, i definitely didn’t swim that slow🤷
