Category Archives: Equipment

GPS Notes

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A couple of years ago I picked up a Garmin 310xt GPS watch to use to track my open water swims. A few fellow Southenders used other Garmin watches either in a Ziploc bag or just stuffed under their caps, but the 310xt was the first properly water resistant GPS watch that Garmin had made and liked the reassurance that that capability gave me.

Because GPS receivers perform poorly or not at all while submerged, the first thing I did with the 310xt was take the strap off and attach it to my goggles using some upgraded spring bars that I had lying around (the 310xt had notoriously flimsy spring bars). You can see the 310xt on the back of my goggles in the header photo for this site – the 2011 Trans Tahoe was one of the first times I used it.

GPS Goggles!

GPS Goggles!

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Nose Clips

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Water temperature in San Francisco Bay at the moment is in the low 50’s which is too cold for me to be doing distance sets. I’ve pretty much abandoned all my open water training in favor of pool sets as I try and ramp up for the Rottnest Channel swim in February.

I’ve found that doing longer sets (~2 hours or more) in pools often results in a horrible runny nose for a day or so after the swim. The actual threshold that induces this condition varies from pool to pool; but equally unpleasant in any case.

A simple bing search did lead me to the remarkably simple solution: a nose clip.

My Friday swim (2 hours) was without a clip and resulted in the nasal drip, my Saturday swim (also 2 hours) and Sunday (3 1/2 hours) were done with the nose clip and resulted in no runny nose.

Only downside is that is slightly harder to chug a feed when you can’t breathe through your nose, but in my pool swims I’m not so worried about that aspect of things.