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Open water distance issues

avikoren1

So my second open water swim and the save issue, distance is way off, being much longer distance,  as much as 1000 yards extra. The track is close to spot on but the distance is ridiculously high. The image attached is on my first open water swim. along the path i swam is also a measured boardwalk being .75 miles in length. I swam just short of that length x 2, say around 1.2 miles. If you look at scale on the map in concurs with about 1.2 miles. However the total distance calculated by garmin is 3623 yards which is 2 miles. No way i swam two miles. I will probably call garmin but i wonder if anyone else is having this issue. Even though i have had this watch since around Nov, being in NY i just started open water swims and unfortunately its useless. 

  • 0 in reply to renton82

    Are you able to tell which one (distance and speed) is the correct one?

  • 0 in reply to KrzysiekJar

    Yes:

    1261-1173 = 88m

    real distance is 107m.

    However my pace  it has never been so slow,  2:07/100m is completely no sense!

  • 0 in reply to renton82

    After seeing 's recent reports, it doesn't reflect my recent experience with OWS, so today I thought I'd double check how good the distance recording is on my 6X Pro Solar, now that my local lake has a measured 1km circuit around 4 buoys (very large triangular Hubb buoys, so you can't miss them!).  Screen grabs from my GC account are below to illustrate; green line is where I pressed the lap button to start/stop each of the two loops and the green dots are where the buoys are (I have auto laps set for 500 yards, hence needing to add the relevant laps together).  First loop was 1144 yards = 1046 metres and second lap 1156 yards = 1057 metres.  Given I didn't swim in perfect straight lines between the buoys, one would expect each lap to be just a little over 1000 metres; so this seems to be pretty darn accurate and consistent.

    One observation up front; you seem to assume that you will swim at the same pace in OWS as you would for short bursts in a pool swim; my experience is that my OWS pace is slower than my pool swim pace (and that assumes the pool is genuinely 50 metre lengths in the example you show; another factor to consider).  That said, whilst my experience and this example specifically, shows the 6X Pro Solar can be consistently accurate for OWS distance (and the GPS tracks are way better than previous Fenix 3, 5 and 5+ watches I have), one thing that might be skewed for those seeing poor OWS distance accrual is the Swim Dead Reckoning for OWS, added in the 5.00 to 6.00 update last year https://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=15031.  The term 'Dead Reckoning' on Garmin watches has long since meant a way of estimating distance/speed from accelerometers; which is used for indoor running, but relies on some initial calibration from outdoor runs with GPS.  Thus it could be that those seeing poor distance for OWS have, at some point in the past, done an activity that has somehow 'distorted' the calibration factors for swim dead reckoning stored in the watch, which is in turn messing up the OWS distance, even if the GPS track is really good.  So, it might be worth first doing some OWS activities with longer straights to see if that gets OWS Dead Reckoning sorted.  Failing that, the dreaded 'master reset' of settings and data, followed by a couple of OWS activities that have some reasonable straights (for calibration), may be needed to clear the bad calibration.

    Large buoys as they were being set out by the lake staff a few days ago:

  • 0 in reply to Crispin_Ellisdon

    Obviously, ows pace is slower than my pool swim pace but not by 30s/100m ! However tomorrow I'll try also with my Suunto 9.

  • 0 in reply to Crispin_Ellisdon

    Thanks for taking the time to write this . Looks a nice place to swim.

    That aside it’s hard to get a handle on why some people have issues in open water and others do not. Unless it’s the individual watches at fault that really only leaves swim technique that does not work well with the way Garmin works in the open water. I’ve had bad tracks in the past but these have been sorted following a software update.

    All I can suggest is that people with problems contact GARMIN support and open a dialogue.

    I’m off for my first swim of the NZ season this morning. Apparently it’s going to reach 15C today although water is apparently around 13C.

  • 0 in reply to Dr Phil

    I did another try today with my Suunto 9 and as i supposed, my pace, even if today i swam slowly than last time, has never passed 2:00m/100m.

  • 0

    Back in the sea for the first time since June. Spring is here and the air temperature is getting warmer even if the sea has a bit of a way to go - apparently just over 12C. Track is a bit wobbly but that might be me as much as the watch as the sea was a bit sloppy but the distance is fine. Buoys on this marked course are approximately 250m apart and auto lap is set at 250m. No issues with the distance measured and you can see the laps are pretty close.

    For me the OWS is still tracking just as well as it was when I was swimming up until June, Settings are GPS+GLONASS, 1s recording.

  • 0 in reply to Dr Phil

    I also will try with a Galaxy watch , but I think it will be the same. The only wrong here is Garmin; happy for you but facts are fact. I will never use Garmin for OWS, simply doesn't work here or for me or both.

  • 0 in reply to renton82

    I understand your position as clearly you, and others, are having issues with open water swimming that myself and others do not. Why? I have no idea. What has GARMIN Support suggested?

  • 0 in reply to renton82

    I am in the same boat, ow doesn't seem to work although with 11.1 is a little better. attached is my last ow swim and as you can tell from the very straight line, the watch was using dead reckoning. then i paused, it got a good gps signal and added more distance on top of the dead reckoning. that is why i believe i always end up with too much distance. the way i see it there are two problems. 

    1. lack of signal forces too much dead reckoning. while this method does a reasonsble job, its not good enough for serious swimmers. 

    2. if dead reckoning is used (lets call that measurement A) and then it gets gps signsl (call that measurement B) the watch needs to maybe average the two orc some how use the best of both BUT it seems like they do A plus B.