I have an idea about monitoring my swim workouts, but don’t know how to pass the idea along to developers to make the idea a reality.
The Nike Foot Pod is basically an accelerometer with wireless communications to an iPod. I was thinking that since the Food Pod works with iPod it might also work with the iPod Touch or iPhone. Maybe someone could write a simple application to communicated with the Nike Foot POD to measure each flip turn to automatically count laps and calculate an average lap speed. And if you tell the application how far a lap is it would calculate total workout distance. Then maybe even add in additional sensors like a heart rate monitor, although I never see anyone wear a heart rate monitor in the pool. Why is that? I’m a newbie and that doesn’t make much sense to me. Of course the iPod would have to be waterproof by something like H2O Audio case.
Now I’d be reluctant to put my iPhone or Touch in the pool even in a waterproof case. I was looking at the Garmin web site today and saw the F60 which is waterproof and has a similar foot pod for measuring running distance. Why can’t F60 be developed to count swim laps? The Foot Pod is small enough to attach it to the back of your goggle strap.
If the iPhone or Touch application already exists please let me know about it. I’d like to try it out. Also, if any of you know people at Garmin pass the idea along to them and maybe they’d be willing to make the F60 a more feature rich device.
Most of the foot pod options are either a fancy pedometer, or a GPS device. To my knowledge, the nike+system works like a pedometer- there’s a small button on the bottom of the plus chip that is triggered with each step.
I wouldn’t think the technology needed to make something to send the data to the ipod would be that tricky, but I doubt the demand is very high for it.
Edit:
Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, it would probably work for one of the companies (such as Polar like you mentioned) to make an additional add-on “pod” that sent the info to your watch or data reciever. Timex and Suunto both have systems that have a set of pods for different things- hr, cadence, gps. Why not make a little touchpad to suction onto the end of your lane? Added on to a system like this, it might be a good selling point to people as 1 more thing they could do with it.
While you pose an interesting question, I think it comes down to the fact that as your swimming proficiency improves, so does your ability to count laps.
Thanks for the comments and ideas. Masters programs are great, but sometimes a long slow continuous swim is great too . I’ve considered the Finis lap counter, I’ve flooded 2 Sport Count each on the first swim, and tried a regular timex ironman watch with lap recall. I agree, so far nothing is as good as the pace clock and a little counting. I have gotten better at counting and my pace is getting better too. What I really would like is to forget about counting for a while and think about life. Kind of like I do when I run. It makes the run go by faster (sometimes literally) and I figure it would make the swim go by faster as well. Plus it will help me solve the world’s problems if I can stop focusing on counting. :-). Plus it would be helpful to download the data and show my coach that I’m actually working out there. All I’m saying is if you know of someone who makes these clever gadgets let them know the idea. I love my Garmin 305 and I see lots of them on the running paths and I’d buy the F60 tonight if it would count laps. I bet many others would too.
PS
Thanks for the link to the Garmin 305 thread. I remember that thread. I’m in Houston and in the summer I sweat a lot on the bike. Enough to short out 2 Garmin 305’s. It is not water proof. There is no way I’d put mine in a pool and expect it to last.
Now I’d be reluctant to put my iPhone or Touch in the pool even in a waterproof case.
I worked at a pool last summer, and was the only LG there who regularly swam laps. The local news did this piece called “deal or dud” and tested various items. They wanted a swimmer to test a water proof case for an Ipod Nano, and my boss volunteered me. The lasy showed up with her husband’s Nano saying “if it breaks he’ll kill me”. She set the thing up and turned it on, and I swam three laps before it started messing up. Then it died for good. The company said she used it wrong and only replaced the case. Needless to say, the story never made the air! Hilarious.
I am a data dork so I actually wear my polar heart rate monitor in the pool and I have a sport count finger watch that I wear. I use the sport count two different ways. Sometimes I hit the button at each wall to see my splits, but I find it’s more useful to time an actual distance, like a 100, 500, 1500, then try to improve on the next rep of the same distance. HRM I use to ensure on my sprints, that I am getting my HR up and taking enough or not too much time to recover in between sets.
I did read somewhere that there is a watch you can wear that measures stroke count without you having to touch it, something with it can tell the difference between being in and out of water. This metric is helpful if you’re trying to reduce stroke count= increase efficiency, but IMO that seems to be a little much, even for a data dork like me
