Internal Mono(b)log

Finis shipped me a Swimsense for a blog review.  I’ve worn it for my LSD swims for the last few weeks and have compiled my thoughts here.

I had been using a sport-count to keep track of my distance in the pool, but it’s a pretty simple and minimal approach to performance tracking in the water.  The SwimSense brings to light so much more information:  time, distance, distance per stroke, swolf (swimming golf) score, stroke type, strokes/length – the volume of data is almost dizzying compared to the complete lack previously.  Above all, it’s great to be able to track all this info without any input from me.  (Invariably I’d double-tap the sport-count, or forget to and loose track of my laps).

I did twice forget to unpause the swimsense at the end of a set and had to subsequently remember to add 3 laps to each of the 2 sets.

The swimsense does a good job of tracking your workouts and comes with easy to use software that allows you to upload the data to the swimsense.com website.  On the site you can drill-down on different intervals, examine all the data that the wrist-computer has collected and set goals to work toward.  Swimsense.com is also integrated with several external sites (trainingpeaks, runkeeper and others) so that you don’t have to manually rekey workout data – a big plus!

The swimsense is really meant to be a pool-training tool or open-water where you know pretty accurately where your turn-arounds are: you have to program in the length of the lengths (that sounds odd), and which wrist you wear the unit on.  It uses accelerometers to determine stroke type and direction.  Long open-water A to B swims will defeat most of its logic.  You can still use it as a chronograph, but all the “good stuff” will be unavailable or inaccurate.

While I think the swimsense is a great tool and an awesome addition to your training kit, there are a few things that I’d like to see improved (none of which would deter me from purchasing a swimsense, just wish-list items):

1. my old eyes find the small print on the screen, at times, hard to see.  The important stuff is large and good/easy to read, but the dynamic button labels are very small and I find myself fumbling to get the right one
2. occasionally, the wrist computer will drop a length – this seems to be related to pausing/stopping the timer then starting again.  I haven’t yet done enough experimentation to figure out the exact cause.  This is minor: over 8 km of swim, it’s dropped 2 lengths on me
3. it’s very (perhaps too) easy to take the wrist computer out of sleep mode and have it draining battery in your gymbag – any button will wake it, but it takes simultaneous pushing of 2 buttons (or menu selection) to turn the unit off.  Perhaps requiring multiple simultaneous button pushes or a sequence of presses to turn the wrist unit on would be an easy and happy-making addition

If, like me, you are a data monkey, if you loose count when swimming lengths, if you train with tools like swimming golf, if you want to focus on swimming and not data collection. the swimsense is a tool that you should seriously consider adding to your bag of tricks.

I really wish I could wear my swimsense in my Masters Swim class – I hate feeling data-blind and the swimsense has taken my in-water available data to a whole new level.