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Open Water Swim metrics screwed up by Triathlon run to transition

I have a suggestion for improving how Garmin Connect handles Triathlon activities. Many triathlons include a significant run from the swim exit to the transition area, and have the timing mat positioned at the transition area entrance. So our "swim" time ends up including a significant amount of running. If we press the Lap button on our devices at the same time we cross the timing mat to keep the results aligned then that screws up the Open Water Swimming metrics in Garmin Connect. So I would like to recommend that Garmin add a feature to mark part of an Open Water Swim inside a Multisport activity as being actually a Run after the activity is over.

The other alternative today is to press the Lap button as soon as I exit the water, but then my times recorded in Garmin Connect for the Swim and T1 won't match the official race results.

0 nradov over 5 years ago in reply to trux

Yes I read it. Transitions are not the issue. The transition activities have correct times and tracks. I could take transitions out of the triathlon activity sequence if I wanted to but that would be pointless. The only problem is with the Open Water Swim activity.

0 nradov over 5 years ago in reply to trux

I appreciate your offer to help but the problem is not with the interface. The activity times are correct, at least in that they match the official race splits. The problem is that some of the swim activity time was actually on land, which messes up the associated analytics. Hence my suggestion that Garmin add a way to designate part of a "swim" activity as not really swimming and ignore it for swimming analytics.

0 trux over 5 years ago in reply to nradov

nradov said:
Hence my suggestion that Garmin add a way to designate part of a "swim" activity as not really swimming and ignore it for swimming analytics.

But if they do that, then the swim time will not respect the offcial timing for swimming again. If I understood well, the offcial swim time includes the run to the timing mat, am I right?

Perhaps you could create a custom "brick" (multisport activity), where you would add another Run activity between the swim and the transition mat.

0 nradov over 5 years ago in reply to trux

That is not what I'm asking for. My suggestion to Garmin is to provide a way to manually designate a portion of an Open Water Swimming activity as not really swimming so as to keep the swimming metrics accurate. Adding another Running activity in the middle wouldn't solve anything.

0 trux over 5 years ago in reply to nradov

nradov said:
Adding another Running activity in the middle wouldn't solve anything.

It would achieve exactly what you just asked for: you would have correct swimming stats (the first activity), also the correct official timing for the first discipline (sum of the first and the second activity), and the true transition time starting at the timing mat (after pressing the lap button on the transition timing mat) as well.

However, there is also another already existing solution, without the need of a custom brick activity - mark manually the end of the swim as a lap. You will then see the correct swim stats in the first lap of the swim activity. Note: since the lap button is used for the transition in the Triathlon mode, you have to mark the lap manually, not using the lap button: press the Stop button, scroll to the option Lap and select it. The time will continue to run (hence the first activity timing will match the official timing), and you will have separate stats for the swim in the first lap of the swim activity.

PS: you could possibly also define a hot key for the manual lap, which would allow you marking the lap quicker. Not sure though whether the hotkey would not trigger the transition in the same way as the original lap key does. Since I have no watch supporting multisport, I cannot test it, but I hope and believe the hotkey could work just for the manual laps.