'It’s taught me the meaning of a steady length’s swimming and consistent stroke rate.' Photograph: Karen Robinson for the Observer
THE GOAL
I wanted to improve on my front crawl in preparation for my first triathlon season. My aim was to get off to a speedy start with the swim portion in two sprint distance and one Olympic triathlon events.
A gadget to motivate, measure and remember my swim sessions, in all their glory, would be ideal, as well as somewhere to store them all, online, for analysis later so that I could be sure just how speedily – or how slowly – I was improving.
THE METHOD
No more calculating distance by squinting at the clock: Garmin Swim took the pressure off and put it on in equal measure by doing all this for me. It let me programme the length of the pool I was swimming in, as well as allowing me to pre-set, and time, intervals, and recording my average stroke rate.
It also measured something called "SWOLF" which, despite sounding a bit like an alarming water-borne predator, is an abbreviation for "swim golf", a metric referring to your combined strokes per length and time for that length.
All of that data can be uploaded online via a nifty antennae USB, where swimmers are free to chew and curse over it, as well as share, via the website and forum, Garmin Connect, with like-minded, Garmin-owning friends.
The downside, however, to Garmin Swim's accelerator technology (which essentially measures the movement of your hand), is that if you stop mid-length - which I often do – to splutter, fix goggles or avoid a full-on collision with another swimmer, the watch, understandably, thinks that you've reached the end of the length (just as you have to push off, hard, before it registers that you have started a new one, too).
Oh, and bear in mind, open-water junkies, that because it's more of a calculator than a cartographer, Garmin Swim will never – neither does it market itself as ever doing so – work well in a lake, river or sea (which, as it happens, are the ideal locations of a triathlete's summer swim training).
THE RESULT
It took a while to master and was at times frustrating to be bound to "regular" swimming rather than able to include technique drills in my total distance measured.
If I'd been a swim-medley kind of girl, I might also have worn my fingers down with button-pushing to change inputted stroke (but being an interval training type, I merely wore them down by pressing pause a lot instead). What's more, training "drills" (such as front crawl exercises where just one arm is used, or interval training where you might swim half a length fast, the pause, and slowly complete) will befuddle the watch beyond belief.
"It's designed for the more professional swimmer, so as you get better, so too does the watch," says Garmin spokesman, Simon Gilbert. "The closer to 'Olympic' level you are, the better."
For those like me on the beginner/intermediate cusp, that results in a rather epic Catch 22: you buy the watch to become a better swimmer, but have to become a better swimmer, before the watch really helps you become a better swimmer.
That said, it has taught me the meaning of a steady length's swimming and consistent stroke rate, and, because digits on the screen don't lie, it has motivated me to swim longer each time.
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