September 2016 Week 12 Session 3 (or thereabouts)

Once again Heeley Baths seemed attractive and I was there at 07:30. It wasn't all that busy and I managed to work well with the warm up in the medium lane and then my fast/slow sets in the fast lane.

I'd set the Garmin Swim to 23m rather than 25 yards so that I recorded metric data throughout (really should be 22.86m). I set the TempoTrainer to 28s but gradually reduced it. I'd forgotten the precise system for Week 12 so started off with alternating 100 yard slow/fast sets. I gradually reduced the length indicator to 25s and was able to maintain that, which seems to be 1:49min/100m. Later in the session I tried to carry on over 200 yards as a single set and struggled to keep up with 26s, or 1:54min/100m.  This is all fine as 1:54min/100m is the target pace for a 25m pool so I'm not far off. Having been to Heeley a few times now it is pretty clear that I'm faster in a short warm pool than a long cool one. The length element is well known, the heat is perhaps surprising.

Rather annoyingly despite making an effort to keep my laps in order the watch did not record the data properly once again. I'm sure I selected SAVE at the end of the swim and my weekly total incremented. However the session does not appear in the list and cannot be downloaded. So the observations above are the extent of my analysis.

This screenshot confirms that there really is a session in there but it can't be accessed. I've emailed Garmin Support UK and wonder what the outcome will be. Unfortunately I'm not committed to any of the new multi-sport watches as they are too large and too costly. There are some Suunto Vertical watches on special offer and although I'm tempted, they are large and are reported to have less than ideal GPS reception.