IM race day timing - do I HAVE to have a 310xt?
I'm wondering what people (who don't have the Garmin 310xt) use to time their entire IM race. I'm doing Louisville which is a staggered start so can't rely on the race clock.
Do you use a waterproof watch and then swap it with a gps watch at the transition? Or, keep the waterproof watch on the entire race and just end up wearing 2 watches?
FYI...I was going to invest in a 310xt but most likely will go with a Joule so I can see all power data on the bike (and wear my old gps for the run).
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As for the total time issue, I know it feels a little geeky to have two watches, but why not just wear the normal Timex (or whatever) on one wrist and start the timer at the beginning of the swim? You can strap on your GPS in T2.
I thought about switching the gps on at T1 and leaving it so it would have 6+ hours to sync up before the run. I'm not crazy about wearing two watches, but if the alternative is spending an extra $350, I can handle looking dorky!
IMCDA '08 I turned my GPS on before the race, at about 6:30am. Once it found the sats I turned it off. When I grabbed my bag in T2 I turned the watch on. It had the sats by the time I exited transition.
After my 310XT debacle at IMFL (f'n piece of crap watch band broke during the swim), I will never again wear the 310XT during the swim. I will wear my Timex on the swim and put the 310 on in T1.
Hopefully, Garmin figures out the watch band issue when they come out with a new model (rumored to be in the spring).
If you're talking about getting the total time of the race using only the GPS watch, you'll want to know how long the battery life of the GPS unit you have is. The 310 is unambiguously able to time through a full IM, but the Garmin 305 is only rated for the neighborhood of 10 hours. So, you'd have to test yours out and make a judgment, based on how fast you are and what your battery life is as to whether that's going to work at all. It might or might not even make it through just your bike and run.
Assuming you decide not to use the the GPS to time your whole race, there's no doubt that the solution that Rich and I suggested will work a large percentage of the time. I have, however, had a time or two when it still took a while to lock on, even when pre-set like that.
I should have added another solution.
Instead of putting the watch on during T2, you could put it on during T1. You can leave it off for most of the bike leg, but turn it on at some convenient time, like at the 100 mile mark or whatever. You'll then have PLENTY of time for it to lock on to the satellites without killing the battery.
I'd suggest just looking at the clock before you hop in the water (presumably there is one?) and then using the time on your 305 (assuming the 305 is your old GPS watch), but realize how bad memory and tri-math-brain can get later in the day.
The suggestion to turn it on during the bike is a good one and may be the way to go for me. I have a Garmin 205 which has 14 hrs of battery.
A question to the IM veterans: I hear that you have to set up your bike/transitions the day before the race. So, do you have access to the transition area the morning of the race (like a normal triathlon)? If not, I suppose I wouldn't be able to turn my gps on until after the race started anyway.
Mac, I haven't done IM Louisville before, but at IM Florida I had full access to my bike, bike bag, and run bag the morning of the race. I even kept my running shoes out until that morning because they're the most comfortable shoes I own.
I have found the 310 to be great. I had begun to have problems calibrating the 625 properly on the run - maybe because it's old. The 310 is extremely accurate, so you can really tell your pace. When you're old and slow, staying on plan is really important. I don's switch at T1 - leave it on my wrist the whole race. I bought an edge 500 when I bought my powertap. The two together work great.
Scott's right - don't put anything in your T1 and T2 bags the day before which might spoil or get ruined if wet (like electronics). You'll have free access to add pills, potions, lotions, watches, towels, whatever you want the morning before, ditto on your bike. (Except if you you go to Hawaii - there, no real access to bags the morning of the race.)
I'm a heretic when it comes to watches. I put on a small timex for the race, and get mile splits on the run. I don't use HR or GPS on the run, just RPE and the mile splits. But I do train religiously with a GPS and use the PM and HR during the bike portion.
I have not raced IM since getting the 310 but will this year. It has worked great for me in all of the races I have used it. As for needing one or total time, you do not need either. Total time on IM day quite frankly just does not matter. There really is not much you can do about it. You swim what you swim, does not help you at all to know exactly what it is at the time. If you take longer than expected it can only bum you out, again, nothing you can do about it. You will execute the bike according to the power numbers, how long it takes, again does not really matter. On the run having pace numbers, or at least mile splits is the key, but really only matter for the first few miles. After you get through 5 or 6 miles you will settle into what you settle into. Hopefully the pace will be close to what your plan is. When you get to the line you will be going with all you have left, Your time will be what it is. Knowing what it is when you cross the line will not change it.
If all that makes you crazy and you have some need to know what your time is during the race, the answer is yes, you need a 310 or else have to wear 2 watches which is kinda sorta ridiculous for a variety of reasons.
I did Louisville this year with no watch during the swim, and my Polar 7 series for the bike and run. Using Chris G's logic, I knew I was going to take it easy on the bike, and the run would be whatever it would be. I did want to have a rough idea of total time though, and went about it as follows. I didn't see the swim clock when I got out of the water but I knew I had swum in less than 1:05, added my bike time to this, added 10 minutes for transitions, and headed out on the run with a plan. I hit the lap button at every mile for the first 8 or so (at which point my legs cramped horribly) but honestly, I couldn't have gone any faster so the splits didn't really matter.
I have a 310 now, and my plan for Louisville will be the same. I will likely not wear it during the swim, but will have the quick-release wristband on. The unit itself will be on my bike when I get to T1, at which point I will turn it on and head out on the bike course, using it for power and heart rate data. Before T2, I will pop it off my handlebars, onto my wrist for the run, and switch it to running mode. The GPS pacing will be nice, but I will use it for the first hour to make sure I'm not going too fast, then just as a guide for the remainder.
I think I bought mine at Trisports.com. I got my 310 right when it was first released (late summer/early fall 2009) so I'm sure I have the first version of it with the shitty band. I didn't end up losing it thanks to the full sleeve wetsuit that kept it in there when the pins and band decided to divorce each other. I did spend an extra 10 minutes in T1 fiddling around with it until I was able to fix it.
I'm going to propose something a bit different here: Don't time the entire race.
Chasing a overall race time - or an event split time - in the swim, bike, or the first 18 miles of the run is one of the best ways to make some zany choices, and zany choices are a great way to prolong your final miles. With a certain number breathing down your neck all day, you can very easily move outside of the RPE, watts, HR, or whatever you should be paying attention to in the moment, and you can very easily stop executing, and start chasing a goal that might not necessarily match the environment or circumstances.
It's not a zen approach I'm suggesting - you're still executing by numbers. But you're *not* executing to a 'sub xx:xx' that is still five, eight, ten hours away, or longer.
Here's what I do:
-swim: who cares? There is nothing I can do during the execution of a IM swim to change things. I can't imagine rolling on my back to look at my watch at a bouy or turn point, and saying "wow, I need to speed up or slow down." As much as I hate this saying, "it is what it is."
-t1 or t2. I go through these fast, and if I'm looking at my watch to see where I am in t1 or t2, it probably means that unless it's great news, I'll make a mistake based on that information in the first 30 minutes of the bike or run, when I should be going very very easy. Again, let it be.
-bike. the only information I get is from my yellow Powertap. This tells me my watts and the ride time, and the ride time is only to say "the first 30' are done, you can stop going stupid easy" and "eat/drink now." I have actually turned the display to show only miles / watts when I have reached the ~100 mile mark so I'm not chasing a bike split and compromising my run. (notice a trend?)
-run. The run is the first time the garmin is on, and it's there to tell me my mile pace only. I know when to eat because there's a feed station in front of me. I don't look at the overall time (by checking the clock) or the split time until around mile 17.5, and then spend a couple of minutes doing the math of what needs to happen for a sub X:XX run or a overall finish of YY:YY.
(more recently, I've also asked other racers I'm running with what the race time is at that 17-18'ish mile point. But this was mainly because I didn't know how to set up a screen to toggle for clock time.)
Takeaway: in EN, your race day is about setting yourself up for the last 8 miles of the run, and the rest of the day is executing. The moment you are concentrating on hitting a 'split' anywhere other than mile 18 is the same moment you have started 'racing.' And that's where the wheels come off for a lot of us.
@ Dave T. Great post.
This is the main reason I DO wear my Garmin 310XT through the entire race. At mile 18, I can't do the math in my head. Hell, at mile 6 I'm not much good at it! I don't look at total time on the Garmin until I get to that point in the race.
My second reason is that the LYC didn't fit on my bike stem (just not enough real estate). So having it on my wrist all day was easiest.
I frankly find using the 310XT for the whole race much more helpful in a HIM anyway. Those races typically have wave starts, and there's really no way to know what your clock time is without either doing some math in your head (see my first point above) or having a device that has been counting since your wave's gun went off.
All that said, No you don't NEED a Garmin 310XT. Heck, you don't really NEED a GPS device. You DO need a watch with at least 25 splits.
I've been inspired by Dave. Here some other reasons I will not use an all day watch in my next IM:
1. I've gradually been shedding items, such as water bottles, HR monitor straps, carry-along gel bottles, etc with each pasing race, as I find they don't help. and thinking about them just slows me down.
2. My past 4-5 races, I've just confused myself with the race-time watch, e.g., someone kicks my wrist in the swim and turns off the stopwatch at 20 minutes; I re-start in T1, and then can never do the math to figure out where I am; stops, even as short as my 40-second pee, on the bike are counted on the wrist, but not on the onboard bike computer. Etc.
3. Despite 24 years of schooling, I still can't make hide nor hair of what the numbers on any given dial mean for the future - my arithmatic skills, meagre to begin with without a calculator, take a complete vacation during an IM.
4. During the bike, I usually set up the screen to show watts and altitude or % grade - anything besides time and speed.
I do like seeing my mile splits on the run, although I still haven't figured out to use that information to change my pace during the race. For me, the run "is what it is." Since I don't want to bother with the Garmin (it's so BIG!), I just wear a little women's sized Timex from the start, so I can know the time to go before the swim start and not have to worry about putting it on during T1 or 2.
I got one prior to IMMoo last year and I loved it. I had it under my wetsuit sleeve and it worked as advertised. The timing was right on, but the distance was **WAY** off. So far off in fact, it showed my swim distance almost double what it really was: 4.5 miles. I would love it if I could swim 4.5 miles in 1:21.
I know three people who have have Garmin 310xt's scattered on the lake/seabeds of several 70.3 swim starts. They get kicked off your wrist with little force, so you might want to wear them under a wetsuit sleeve, or leave them on the bike.
Changes made from version 2.70 to 2.90:
* Implemented swim code that corrects distance values on open water swims. The distance is not displayed in real-time, but updates when the stop or lap button is pressed. This feature can be enabled only in 'Other' sport by going to Settings > Other Settings > Swim > Enabled ? Yes.
That being said, I would be more worried about the other problem of having it ripped off your wrist. I have had non-GPS watches ripped off during swims. I would hate to be the proud owner of a $400 anchor that you can never use!
In my n=1 experiment the strap breaking, coming off wrist, screen breaking, thing being fragile at all have all been non issues. I think that there were some issues very early on and the issues have become more folklore than anything else. I got mine pretty early on and have beaten the crap out of it with no issues. I regularly break stuff, just not the 310 [knocking on wood as I type this]. If you install the newer firmware swim distance thing should be pretty good. There were a bunch of posts on that somewhere, think it was at the beginning of last summer.
I would have no reservations about racing with it on my wrist from start to finish. It has served me very well. I have started the swim a couple times with it tucked under the wetsuit sleeve, that never lasted very long. I do not understand the point of racing with it under a swim cap? Not going to get an accurate time that way and then have to deal with it in T1 anyhow, seems counter productive. As for determining swim distance in a race, who cares...just assume that it is really really long no matter what your time was ;-)
The newer quick release kit for the 310xt uses the original strap and actually has little screws to hold the strap together.This is actually much more secure than the original strap by itself as it is only held together by spring clips.The quick release is super solid and I think my arm would get ripped off before that connection came off.
I also race with it during the swim. I bought an extra quick release kit and zip tied it to my goggle straps. I then put it under my swim cap and can push the start button through the cap. The unit sits on the back of my head so that when I am swimming face down it is pointing up and gives me pretty accurate results and is a little more out of the way in terms of getting knocked around. I feel the goggle straps and swim cap are more than enough to ensure it won't get lost. When I get out of the water I just pull down my wet suit and snap it into the quick release on my wrist. I then have a quick release on the bike to snap it into once i get going and then before getting off I can snap it back on my wrist for the run. It's a super simple setup and ensures I have my 310xt connected and with me all the time.