El Andalous - Garmin Forerunner and Open Water Swimming

An Unusually Rough Sea

I did a review of my new Garmin Forerunner watch fairly recently, but at that point, I hadn’t used it for open-water swimming. Now I’m back in Egypt, I’ve been using it almost daily.

It was really nice to be back swimming in the sea even though I’d enjoyed swimming in my local pool in Switzerland, particularly with my Garmin watch alerting me as to how I was doing compared to my other swims each time.

When I met Kathleen and Tom, Kathleen commented on how nice it was to be in the sea because it was so soft. That wasn’t a descriptor I’d ever considered before – I’ve thought of the sea as salty, buoyant, warm, clear or cloudy depending on the weather (in winds, the sand from the seabed gets churned up into the sea), rough or calm, interesting due to the life in the sea that you can see below, or dangerous if there were boats or if the tides change direction or strength, but I’ve never thought of it as soft. However, she’s right! When I next went in and considered the texture of the sea, it is indeed almost soapy.

I have been trying to do some drills when swimming in the pool (but am not entirely sure I am doing them correctly), but when open-water swimming I’ve tried to focus on distance and increasing my endurance. Towards the end, I was trying to do 2km in one go whenever I had the time, but it takes me just under an hour in open water, so I didn’t always have the chance to do that much. I’m a bit disappointed that the Garmin watch doesn’t record your longest distance or best time for this specific activity. Therefore, there’s no exciting buzz to tell me I’ve made a personal best. It’s a big failing on the watch that could be so easily rectified.

A positive thing, though, is that it does buzz me every 500m (it seems to be set up like that automatically – I don’t think I did it, or maybe I did?), so I can keep a tab on how far I’ve gone without have to look at my watch. I find 500m quite a good distance for it to buzz me (it always takes me longer than I think!), since I tend not to forget if I’m on my second, third, or fourth buzz due to how tired I’m feeling or my desire to swim just that bit further. If I were swimming 10km at a time, it might not be so useful!

I’m much slower in the open water, either that, or I’ve suddenly got a lot worse at swimming! I had been quite proud of having progressed to a maximum speed of 2:17 (2 minutes and 17 seconds) per 100m (so I’m still a below the speed of an average swimmer, but for me, this is a good improvement) in the pool, and I was achieving 2:19 relatively often on a good day. I think that’s about 2.6 km/hr. In the open water, I’m only managing around 2:40 per 100m, which is about 2.2 km/hr, or maybe 2.3 km/hr on a good day.

However, these have been my first swims of 2km non-stop crawl, and I’m hoping that this will make the shorter distances feel that much easier, or make it easier to incorporate some flip turns in the pool and still retain my stamina. We shall see.

I have been trying my best to swim most days when in Egypt and my limbs have been aching. Only recently have I started to go to sleep without my arms hurting, so I’m hoping this means I’ve built up some strength. There were days where I was doing a 2km crawl, followed by a 4km bike ride to the reef where I like to snorkel, then a 2-hour snorkel, followed by a return 4km bike ride (sometimes facing some hefty wind). However, I was shattered by the end of this; I think it was too much.

I said in a previous blog that I found the groups on Garmin not very useful since the only challenge available is distance. I will now take that back! It would be nice to have speed challenges (where I would come almost last), but the distance challenges are more interesting than I thought they would be as they do motivate me to try a bit harder and swim that much further. And they enable me to track how far I’m swimming overall. And I can now appreciate how much swimming other people do!

So, for the entire time I was in Egypt (27 days), I swam a total of 37.3km (snorkeling didn’t count!). To my astonishment, in the over 50s group, which has challenges lasting three weeks, I came in 3rd among the females last time with 23km (the first female had swum 49km and the first male had swum almost 64km in 3 weeks, so I’m way behind!). I was 14th overall. I’ve now worked out that if you’re a faster swimmer, it’s easier to do longer distances because you need less time. Anyway, I find this a good indicator that the over 50s aren’t old fuddy duddies – we’re a go-getting, active bunch!

Some of the swimmers out there are doing swims of 10km or more, particularly if there are swimming events that people can go to. In an overall group that I’m part of, which has challenges lasting one month, the first place in April went to someone who had swum 204km which makes for an average of almost 7km a day. With a total distance over the month of 23.5km I came in at 125th! This month, because I’ve swum more due to being in Egypt, I’m currently in the top 80, but I might flag a bit when I’m back in Switzerland, so I’m not sure I’ll manage to cling to that position. I guess I’m showing my geeky side here, but I find all this fascinating and also inspiring.