Have been swimming in the ocean and walking (instead of swimming in the pool and weight training) since the Covid 19 crisis began so have been thinking of getting a watch that keeps track of both my distance swimming and distance walking. Seems like the Garmin Swim 2 watch is the best out there (not interested in Apple). Before I take the plunge I was hoping for some feedback from people who already use it.
Have been swimming in the ocean and walking (instead of swimming in the pool and weight training) since the Covid 19 crisis began so have been thinking of getting a watch that keeps track of both my distance swimming and distance walking. Seems like the Garmin Swim 2 watch is the best out there (not interested in Apple). Before I take the plunge I was hoping for some feedback from people who already use it.
Contact pwb (Patrick Brundage). He uses a Garmin Swim 2 and posted about it on the "Measuring heart rate while swimming" thread.
I'll offer my experience with using a GPS watch for open water swimming. But, I will admit that I've never used a GPS watch with a swim function. The GPS watches I've used for open water swimming have always been running watches. First I used the Garmin Forerunner 10, and now use the Garmin Forerunner 25. They're both inexpensive, and basic providing pretty much only time, distance, and pace. When used for open water swimming, they don't really work well when worn on your wrist...they lose the GPS signal when you plunge your hand into the water, and then it may or may not regain the signal once your hand comes out of the water for your brief recovery. At best, when the watch is worn on the wrist for a swim, the resulting route will be all "zig zaggy" and the distance will be way off. I'm not sure how GPS watches with a swim function overcome that (probably use of "dead reckoning" but that's a different discussion). So, with my running GPS watch, at first I was strapping it to my head, under my cap, so that it would be on the crown of my head and never go under water. That worked pretty well. But, I couldn't really take a quick glance to see how far I had gone. But I could hear the 'beep' at each mile. Then, a couple years ago I began towing one of those inflatable safety buoys during open water swims. Now, I tie the watch so that it's on the top of the buoy and it works great, and is accurate. The only issue I've discovered is that I have to make sure "Auto Pause" is not turned on. If it is, swimming is so slow compared to running, or even walking, that the watch thinks you've stopped so it stops recording. Another issue is the calorie count. If you upload a recorded workout to Strava or MMR, a two-mile swim will say you only burned around 100 calories. I guess that's because it's a 'running watch' and it think you took an hour to run just two miles.
Dan
I'll post here what I shared in a few different PMs ...
First, some background. I'm in my early 50s now and have been a competitive swimmer since I was about 7 or 8 years old. It's all I really like to do for exercise! I really don't like to wear watches (even on land) and have pretty much always resisted wearing a watch while swimming. Years ago, when the original Garmin Swim came out, someone got it for me and I grudgingly tried it, but just didn't find it useful for pool swimming.
Fast forward to our pandemic times. When our pools closed (I now live about 90 minutes north of Toronto, Canada), I reverted to walking/hiking as my main form of exercise. In mid-May, though, I got a tip on a nearby, shallow lake that had finally become warm enough to swim in with a wetsuit. I did a bit of research and decided that the Garmin Swim 2 watch could be a good option for measuring my swim distances in my lake swim. I did read good reviews of the Apple Watch, but, as I don't wear a watch, just didn't feel like I needed all those other bells and whistles.
Here's what I like/love about the Garmin Swim 2:
Low profile and snug fit. I really don't notice it when I'm swimming, except when I get the alert buzz that I've completed a lap/gone a certain distance. This is REALLY important to me ... back to me hating watches :)
I'm very confident that the open water swim distance measurements are pretty darn accurate. So, it seems to go a great job for wild swimming.
Though the user interface is not the most intuitive, I do like that you can customize the 'data fields' that show on the watch face. I have my main OW screen set to just show distance so that, at any point, I can pause a bit and easily see how far I've gone. I can usually do that mid-stroke without much of a pause as the font is large enough if you limit the screen to showing only one 'data element' (e.g., distance).
I like the 'Lap' feature (which, in metric, is set at 500M) as, when you turn that feature on, you get both a physical buzz (which you can feel) and an audio buzz, and then for a bit, the watch face shows you your time on that lap. This is helpful, as well, for judging speed if you're trying to swim for time/pace.
You can also add additional alerts based upon time, distance or other metrics. So, I was doing one virtual open water event that had both a Half-Ironman (1930 meters) and Ironman (3860 meters) distance, so I added an alert every 965 meters so I'd know when I was halfway through the Half, etc.
I really don't wear the watch in the pool because I don't need it except for one specific use: I do a heart-rate test set to assess my fitness every 4-6 weeks. The heart rate monitor seems to do a good job measuring HR even in the water, so I use it for that. (That test set came from Dave Salo and I summarize it in this recent post -www.1001pools.com/single-pos...-testing-1-2-3)
Finally, on land, while I don't run, I have a 4-5K trail walk that I can do from my house. I set the watch on the run mode and it gives me good feedback on distance and pace.
The 'GPS map tracks' on both the swim function and the run function are awesome and fun.
Here's what is sub-par about the watch:
It works really well for freestyle and backstroke, but seems to get messed up if you're doing a lot of breaststroke. I think that's because the watch needs to be out of the water fairly frequently to stay in synch with the GPS satellites. That's not a big deal for me as I am pretty much only doing freestyle in open water, but I have noticed that and other people have commented on that.
If you are wearing it in the pool and do things other than swimming (e.g., drills, kicking), it does NOT do a good job of tracking distance.
There's a bit of funkiness to get the watch set up initially with the Garmin Connect app, and to alter watch faces with a different Garmin app (IQ) ... but once I figured that out, Garmin Connect works well and I haven't changed the main watch face.
Going to have to double check your 200 FL result. Do you have race video? I made sure mine was recorded for proof of the deed ;)
Since I'm dead on the inside, I can't be photographed.
Virtual swimming is dead to me.
Haha! I'd like to see a picture of your watch under your cap! I've been trying to figure out how I could keep a gopro handy on my ocean swims without it getting in the way of my swimming (which is the priority). I've seen seals, sharks, flounders, crabs, barracudas, huge schools of mackerel etc. this summer without any photographic evidence.
I guess I shouldn't even consider the Forerunners. Looks like I'll have a steep learning curve with my new watch.
Well, I ordered it this morning on Amazon so I hope I have better luck with it than you. I'll have to remember to get a wiggle on when I use it to measure my walks!
I have a Garmin 910 and Garmin Swim 2. I can feel lap alarm on 910 but not on Swim 2. I can't make either work for a hike (put a little jog in and it's fine). For some reason both think I'm standing still. Perhaps it's my turtle hiking pace. The swim 2 is awful for detecting stroke. I swam every single event in the virtual championship and I think the only one that I didn't have to enter manually was 200 fly.
