Swimming with the fenix 5x

Former Member over 6 years ago

I am happy with my Fenix 5x for running, cycling and hiking. The battery life is excellent. The construction sound. The interface is very easy to use and very versatile. I can't understand why there is so little commitment from Garmin to the swim portion of their product. I have written them and the answer I got was there is no plans to address these issues. I am left with trying to enlist others with similar feeling to get some answer from Garmin. My swim concerns are;
Why doesn't swimming count toward intensity minutes for excercise? Doesn't anyone at Garmin swim?
Why is open water swimming distance measured in yards? Doesn't anyone at Garmin do open water swimming or triathlons?
Why is there is no auto pause option for indoor swimming? My three year old suunto ambit three does auto pause for swimming quite well. Its not called auto pause, when you’re swimming sets of 100s or 200s it knows when you’ve stopped and gets the interval distance right. My Garmin fenix has the interval distance and the total distance as the same. Unless I press the back button every time I rest between intervals. It seem ridiculous that you have to remember the back button each time.
I know people have been asking Garmin for years, what’s their answer for not adding these features?
How do you feel about the swim features of your 5x? Thanks.

0 TrippyZ over 6 years ago

The swim features of my Fenix 5 are good and accurate. I think that it does affect intensity minutes (I use HRM-Swim) but I am not certain - and I don't really care to much either. I usually set 1000 a weekly and hit it most of the time.

I mostly follow workouts and always use the Lap button to mark the start and end of intervals. I have never tried not using the button. It seems reasonable to have to press a button. I do not consider this to be ridiculous.

My open water swims are recorded in meters.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

I also have no real complaints about swimming with my Fenix 5X. Since intensity minutes are largely based on heart rate I think the reason swimming is not factored in is that most swims don't have HR data.

The open water swim is likely set based on whether you are using metric or imperial units. To me this seems reasonable. You mention triathlon but keep in mind only some of the distances are defined in meters. Half Iron and Iron distance tris have swims in miles, and most triathletes I know convert those to yards.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

Thanks for your thoughts about swimming with the 5x. TrippZ, if I’m doing ten 100s, I would like the fenix to segregate them into ten 100s rather than one 1000. If auto pause would do that I think it would be a step up from pushing the back button twenty times. Once to pause and then to restart on the next 100.
Paul, I didn’t know the intensity minutes were linked to heart rate. You’re correct, I turn off the heat rate monitor for swimming. As for open water I would prefer that the distance be in miles, rather than yards. I appreciate your idea help.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

One way for you to get miles instead of yards might be to use a ConnectIQ data field. I'm not sure if there is one that does this but maybe someone has developed a custom data field for open water distance in miles.

If you want to reduce the number of times you have to press the lap button you can use the swim workout feature. If you create a swim workout in Connect you could set a repeat of 10x100 with whatever your rest interval is between them. You'd still have to hit the lap button at the end of each 100 but it would then start counting down to the next interval and start it automatically. I do almost all of my swim workouts this way since it's so much easier to have the watch prompt me for each step instead of memorizing a workout or bringing it on a piece of paper (and trying to keep it dry).

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

Paul,
Those are great suggestions, thanks for your help. I will try to put together a work out in connect and get it into the watch. I agree it would be a real step forward to have it loaded into the watch rather than the wet paper. I just have to learn how. Thank you.