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Open Water Swim Question.

gregjohnson1956
over 3 years ago

I see a lot of open water swim posts from 2 years ago but thought I would ask a question here about the Fenix 7X SS.  I had a long pool swim thread that really helped me because I now record 1000 meter swims accurately in both 25 and 50 meter pools by wearing the watch on my right hand and pushing off and gliding hard on the turns.  

We arrived in Mexico 3 days ago and there is a huge pool here that is about 100 meters long in an irregular shape.  I can not swim laps.  Therefore I switched to open water and just swim for about 30 minutes.  I know my pace and that distance was at least 1000 meters if not more.  On two swims the watch reported 600 to 660 meters.  I was swimming around the periphery of the extremely large pool and crossing back and forth diagonally.  The map shows the pool and fills it with red tracking lines.  I did  pause the activity a couple of times to rest and then punched resume.  The time and everything else was accurate.  But the distance not.  

Any advice?  I don't really need to record distance in that pool swim with no laps, but was just playing around and really learning the watch now.  I am not confident enough to go do a 1000 meter swim in the ocean.  Its a little rough out there and I would be swimming alone parallel to the beach.  

By the way ... what are the little curved lines at the top of the watch in various colors on the walking or hiking app?  At the start of the walk activity a see a green arch at the top thord of the watch, then it shifts to little arcs of various colors.  What is that?  

On my Fenix 3 HR that I wore for years, when I started an activity, I waited for the green arc to complete the 360 degree circle around the outer face of the watch and then it beeped when GPS was ready to go and all necessary satellites acquired.  I don't see that now, but did add the GPS graph to all of my activity screens.  

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to JRV

    My wife completed another open water swim test today, while wearing the 7S and the 5S again, this time on the 8.16 beta for the 7S.  It appears the open water tracking issues persist even now that the pool swim issue appears to be fixed.

    7S in red this time, 5S in blue.

    Now, most telling data from these swims is actually the stroke data from both.

    As you can see, something seems to be badly impacting the 7S's ability to interpret accelerometer data properly, which I assume in turn throws off all the distance measurements when GPS signals aren't being received.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to JRV

    They would have to revisit entire algorithm for Fenix 6 Fenix 7 Forerunner watch lines... they are all bugged. Take my advice, just use another watch for OWS, i don't think Garmin will solve this problem, it's almost 3 years it's here...

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to JRV

    Obviously something very different between the two. In the other swims the tracks have been very different with the 5 being much more erratic. How was it this time? I had a 5+ that very rarely worked in the open water. And don’t get me talking about my Marq Athlete! But as you can see my experiences with my F7 Sapphire Solar/Epix have been, and continue to be good. Do you know what the actual distance should be? Since the watch is on beta then you’d best email the outdoor team at the email given on the beta thread. 

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to Dr Phil

    The tracks this time are quite jumbled, since it was multiple rounds back and forth on top of one another, but generally track together with a slight offset between the two.

    The actual distance is a bit over 5,500 yards when accounting for swim out, which puts the 5S much closer to the mark.

    The issues have preceded the beta releases, and these comparison swims were begun at the direction of Garmin support to give them further data on the issue, as they claimed they had not received any other reports of open water swim distance tracking issues prior to this.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to JRV
    JRV said:
    as they claimed they had not received any other reports of open water swim distance tracking issues prior to this

    LOL!!!!

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to JRV
    JRV said:
    they claimed they had not received any other reports of open water swim distance tracking issues prior to this

    I suspect they are specifically referring to the F7/Epix. Good to hear Garmin are involved in finding a resolution for you. As you suggest there could well be accelerometer issues with your watch that might warrant a replacement. What GPS setting were you using for this swim? I have All+Multiband and 1s data recording. 

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to gregjohnson1956

    Hi there - sorry for the late reply but I have clocked around 250 open water swims with both a F7 and Epix 2.  I also have a control watch in a swim buoy and my data always gives me a perfect track on both Epix and the F7 but the distance is constantly around 85% of actual

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to Stewart.Fairbairn

    That’s an extraordinary amount of swimming for a watch that’s only been available for 3 months. I thought I was doing well swimming 3 or 4 times per week! To amass that amount of swimming in less than 3 months you must be recording  3 or 4 swims a day. Have you contacted Garmin? No doubt Garmin will want to review the data in order to see where the inaccuracy in your watch comes from..

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to Dr Phil

    After several rounds of back and forth with Garmin, they have requested the watch be sent to them for engineering examination and are providing a replacement.  Plan to see if the replacement exhibits the same issues, or if it is hardware-related.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to JRV

    It's not for sure hardware relates, all watches I owned (and I own), behaviour the same. you can save yourself the trouble.