Swimming with the 265 manual laps and distance

gxgene1 11 days ago

265 swimming Manual lap count? Due to a temporary foot injury I've swapped from running to swimming for cardio and I don't trust the 265's data at all. Today it recorded lap distances from 25 yards to 325 yards and the times all over the map for like distances

OK I’ve since read I need a strong push and glide, but I pretty much did that today and still bunk for readings. It would simpler though annoying to do a manual lap count. I could live with 50 yards, two lengths of the pool for a manual press. I set up a custom length of 50 yards, turned off Auto Rest and Stroke detection. On dry land I then initiated a pool swim moving my arms to simulate a swim (just because), did a couple of “laps”, stopped with the result of no distance detected. Turned Stroke detection back on, tried again, same result; turned Auto Rest back on, no change.

I had hoped to find a setting that would register the lap distance based on the manual lap presses. The back button generated a lap each time pressed.

On a treadmill, I do manual laps because my pace and stride vary, the times and distance are never fully correct, so I watch the treadmill and hit lap at 1 mile intervals, then do a save and calibrate at the end. The downside to that is the lap distance still get screwed up because the save and calibrate doesn't recalculate the laps based on the new calibration, but at least the overall time and pace are correct for upload. Pool swimming needs something like that because If I can't trust the data from the 265 how will I know if I've improved for distance and pace?

Maybe distance will register in the pool when hitting the lap button with some combination of Auto Rest and Stroke on/off but I’m not holding my breath, well mostly.

0 gxgene1 11 days ago

I pulled out the 245 and tested both watches on land. Even with Auto Rest and Stroke Detection turned off it takes a push off the wall for the accelerometer to register a lap, pressing the lap button does nothing other than for the 265 cause a lap time to be announced, the laps didn't show up post "activity" unless they were registered by pushing off a wall and then without pushing off a wall I got a fake lap. So it appears the only way to make a lap counter is to set the watch to treadmill run then do manual laps while swimming, and from that I'll get an accurate time and be able to calculate distance and pace.

I believe my 100 yard times will be considerably slower using manual calculations but based on what I've just experienced I have to question the pool swim lap times and distances by anyone using a Garmin. The next swim will be educational.

0 gxgene1 8 days ago in reply to gxgene1

I swam today selecting Treadmill (since the Garmin auto registered laps aren't reliable) and at various yard intervals pressed the lap button. I saw that laps register on the watch. I get home expecting to see the laps presented regardless of it was a slow walk of a "Treadmill run". No laps present, only "intervals". Why the bloody blue blazes did the activity not preserve the laps I took care to initiate?!?!$***!! I'm chewing nails right not and my assessment of the software on the 265 wouldn't be considered complimentary!

0 gxgene1 8 days ago in reply to gxgene1

I figured out some of it. In Garmin Connect the intervals can be expanded and it looks like the laps show up in the expanded data but they aren't called laps. I got enough information to figure out the actual distance swam and as expected when Garmin is in charge of counting laps, it's cooking the books, registering more distance than actually swam.

As a treadmill run it came in just under 2 miles, 27min / mile, not exactly desirable data and since worst case I was going to delete the activity (since I had the data), I found it can be edited in Connect. I changed the activity type to swim and now it shows laps! That was a real surprise since there is no way to register manual laps in swimming (at least that I've found).

The distance that resulted from the activity conversion was way over what I swam, so I changed the pool length to get the closest reflection I could of the actual distance traveled. None of this made it back to the watch unfortunately on a resync.

I will have to stick to shorter lengths for laps, maybe I can do 100 yards; at 200 yard (8 lengths) it's too easy for a guy like me who is new to lap swimming to get lost in other thoughts like..don't suck wind your head is still under water:|

The watch data is still bunk but this is at least a way to get closer to reality.

And as I've read in a previous post, should someone suggest swimming better, I've seen the 265 register double yards on one length after just pushing off the wall and swimming to the next.

I'm not saying this is an easy gig for Garmin to sort out but not everyone who wants to improve is a polished swimmer, so Garmin please provide a manual lap button press that registers the lap and calculates the distance traveled at the chosen pool length, instead of feeding us false ego data.