910XT Swim Data (Page 2)

The question posed was:

" I am wondering what kind of data I can get out of this thing that would help improve my swim?"

I wasn't aware only approving opinions were allowed.  My opinion is that these watches do not provide value in the water.  A written and/or coached workout from an ASCA certified coach with intervals is far superior.  

I use watches when I swim alone or in the ocean/lakes or pools that have substandard pace clocks.  

H20 killer is that you?

I'm not referring to your opinion of the value of watches in the water.  That is very welcome, and has spurred some great commentary that elicited more information about the watches for the original poster that he might not have gotten otherwise, good, bad or otherwise.

I'm referring to this:

"The first thing I do when a tri walks into a swim practice..."

"They can give me much more info about their swims simply from using the pace clock than the triathlete who comes in with the silly huge watch."

"Without fail, the silly tris who insist on pushing buttons at the walls instead of the swimmers who use the pace clock have terrible walls and their forms goes in the toilet"

"I realize tris think that every gizmo makes them better, but in this case, no, sorry."

"Trying to convince tris to act like swimmers in the water is usually pointless and this discussion is just further proof of that."

Please leave your negative opinions of triathletes at the door.  We work hard, play hard, and we're our own worst critics. 

And to rephrase something that you said that I mostly agree with:  "A coached workout from an certified coach with triathlon experience is far superior."

Thank you (no sarcasm here) for your opinion.  I really do value your emphasis on the importance of coaching.  When I can afford it I'll invest in masters classes or whatever is recommended by some of the better triathletes I'm currently surrounded by.  I'll make sure to leave my watch at home and focus on the drills.

Uh oh...  Did I just hit on one of the things that people get the popcorn emoticons for?

Gerald - soooo sorry for derailing your post.

I am not worried about it.

I very rarely use a watch except for open water swims and at a pool I go to when doing something on my own that has no pace clock or even lanes, so I use one then. Most of my swimming is with a masters group, when I am going, which lately has not been often. I agree with what Bryan is saying.

I must say that the only benefit I see to using the 910XT in a pool (other than swimming on your own with no pace clock), is that I can see how my pacing went on a time trial, if I am going out to hard, check out the splits, etc. cause I do not always remember every split on a 1K TT, and in reality a pace clock can do that to.

You would not catch me wearing one at a masters workout because the pace clock is all you really need. Plus when I would be pressing a button, they guy next to me would be leaving me behind right off the bat.

I should have worded the question differently or not even asked at all since I was just curious as to what others were looking at when reviewing the data, sometimes it is fun to check out.

I know the bottom line to getting faster is to swim a heck of a lot with most of that hard.... and with good technique of course.

Ignore the troll and maybe he'll lose interest.

I comes to mind, I press the start button on my SwimSense watch before my first warm-up lap and then press it again after the last cool-down lap. It has the ability to automatically record swim sets and rests.

So there is not a lot of button-pressing interfering with my workout.

I then download to the SwimSense online application and export to TrainingPeaks and other log software.

Open water, it's start-stop with a 910XT. It downlaods to software as well.

Presumably there is no objection to my having data on my own performance, eh? As triathletes are managing workload on 3 sports, knowing the workload of a swim is important to manage overall workload. PhysFarm RaceDay2 Apollo excels in this category.

Getting back to the original question: I just got a 910XT and have found that the device records a ton of data effortlessly, but the Garmin Connect pool swim graphs don't really tell me much about a given workout other than the trend of my pace or stroke count over each interval.  For example, how does my stroke count affect my pace?  How does my weak kick affect my pace?  How much am I falling off toward the end of the workout?  I'm new to swimming and am pretty slow, so I can use all the data/help I can get to figure out how to improve.

I ended up exporting to .csv and making my own graph using some proprietary software I use.  The plot shows my lap time (per 25yds) in seconds vs my stroke count as recorded by the Garmin (I'm guessing the stroke count should be x2 to account for both arms, but whatever).  In a gross sense, it appears that I swim faster with a lower stroke count.  I'm new to swimming and don't have very good form, but I thought I should be swimming faster with a higher stroke count!  Also, I did a few intervals of 100-600 yards over the course of the workout, so the color coding shows how far into each interval I was in yards: basically hotter colors higher on the y axis show me slowing down over the intervals (not good!).  Also, judging by the two orange points > 32 seconds, I must be really slow after about 400 yards!  (This might also be due to me taking a second or two to press the lap button at the end of the interval...yeah, that's my excuse!)

So basically with a single button press to start and end each interval (not each pool length), I was able to glean several useful pieces of information about my workout that will direct me in my future training.  Now I need to get a coach to interpret the data and tell me how to improve!