I have heard many good things about the garmin 310xt, but is it useful for swim training? I have a garmin edge 205 for the bike and I use a crappy watch for running. If I do make the jump to the 310xt I want it to be a useful swim tool.
I’ve been swimming with mine since Christmas. The interval settings seem to work for me and the vibrate alarm is great in the water. It is big. So, if you are in a crowded masters session you will kill people with it.
I was excited about this when I heard about it, but the reviews I’ve read have not been good. The user’s were in agreement that the signal is lost when the swimmers hand enters the water and it creates accuracy issues with swim distance. Plus if you look at the map for distance traveled, it looks like a zig zag on the swim portion. I’m still curious about trying one for myself, but I’m not going to spend the money on it when I have the 305 and the reviews aren’t good…
The 310XT does not transmit heartrate in the water. It can not measure distance accurately while swimming. If you want heartrate and the ability to upload to trainingpeaks, I highly recommend the Polar RS400 with their T31 Coded belt (but I admit there isn’t a huge amount of value in getting heartrate while swimming). The 310XT for swimming just ends up being a stopwatch.
I have used the watch for a few months. Garmin recommends that you turn off the GPS for swimming. The battery life is almost double the 305. You can always use the watch with powermeters.
What reviews aren’t good? The reviews have been phenomenal for the 310XT.
Of course the signal will get lost when it’s underwater. I’m not sure anyone expected the GPS to actually work underwater. What Garmin did was make a waterproof multi-sport GPS watch that can be worn while swimming.
Have had the 310XT since June 09, 305 before that and 205 before that. Used my 305 for OWS by putting in my swim cap (none of that baggie or other stuff nonsense), just in the cap. Worked just fine. Easy (in multisport mode) to hit lap when I hit the swim timing mat, and clip on the bike (using the multisport kit). I do the same with the 310…except it fits in swim cap much easier with the sleeker multisport kit. On your wrist, it is nothing more than a stopwatch getting only occasional gps waypoints and the intermittent HR reading. However, in the swim cap, you can have it set for alerts (I set mine at .25 miles and 5 min)…helps me know where I should be. Then, hit lap at swim mat and it is automatically in T1. The real kicker is the battery life…I have gone more than 20hrs between recharges and it easily handled my IMAZ in Nov performance. Ditch the Garmin software and go with SportTracks and you’ve got all you really need.
I’ve used it indoors in the pool and only advantage is that it downloads laps if you use the lap button in intervals. But no distance, so still have to manually enter that.
Looks like you still need to sue the swim cap trick for the 310xt.
The is the most detailed review with comparisons of the swim cap trick and wearing it on your arm.
http://dcrainmaker.blogspot.com/2009/09/garmin-forerunner-310xt-in-depth-review.html
Unless you put the Garmin under your swim hat, forget about GPS, especially in an indoor pool. The heart rate too because neither will transmit accurately in the water. For the swim the only function you get without messing around is time. You can set up automatic laps based on time, ot hit lap manually to record lap times.
But it is a great tool for performance monitoring and recording the data from a complete triathlon. Set it up in auto-multisport with transitions and press start when you start swimming. Cross the timing mat and hit lap. Swim time (and a convoluted and elongated distance) is recorded and T1 time starts. HR starts getting picked up as long as you have your chest strap on. Get on the bike, cross the timing mat and hit lap. T1 time is recorded and bike time starts - automatically switches to your prefered bike settings. Finish the bike, cross the timing mat hit lap. Bike time recorded and T2 timing starts. Run out, cross the timing mat, hit lap, T2 timeis recorded and run time starts with device automatically switching to run and the relevant information.
As far as I am aware, there is no other single device on the market that will do that. All the other need additional pods or gizmos for GPS or data collection.
Maybe a stupid question…why do you like Sporttracks better than Garmin Connect??
Spitz, Popov, and Phelps would have never reached their levels without H20 Ipods and the Garmin 310xt.
Seriously, drop those tools and just swim. don’t try to buy your way to a faster swim split, spend 25-40k yrds in the pool for a couple consistent weeks and report back how that goes.
pace clock, no need for anything else
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Maybe a stupid question…why do you like Sporttracks better than Garmin Connect??
I can’t speak for the person you were asking but I like SportTracks better for the simple reason that you get a very nice Google map of the route. Not some hideous, wildely inaccurate line drawn map but real google maps which are far better.