Triathlete Pip Taylor: No Hiding From the Numbers

Mar

Posted in GPS MANUFACTURERS on March 1, 2012

So the last couple of weeks I have been taking my new favourite training partner out: sometimes I get my butt kicked, sometimes I get to do the butt kicking so there are no real surprises there. But what has really been the eye opener is just how smart this training partner is!! Always on time, always accurate, always holding a steady pace, never lost and always remembering afterwards all the exact dirty details of each and every training session. Even underwater. Yep my new Forerunner 910xt arrived and I have been just a little bit excited!! While I am back home in Australia, Sundays are a bit of a ritual that include a morning swim across the bay (Byron Bay) and breakfast afterwards with friends. The 910xt has accompanied me on a couple of swims now and I have to admit it has been amazing. Initially I was a little doubtful as to just how much I would use it in the open water but one swim and I was completely sold. What I love the most is that with the auto alerts I can tell exactly when i hit a certain distance or time. For me this means that I no longer have to go to the pool to do an accurate interval session. And when you live near such a stunning coastal bay as I do, that truly is a fantastic thing! Until now if I had a swim set where I had to meet specifics or do multiple interval sets, then the open water was out simply because it as pure guess work. Now there is no guessing – no counting strokes to estimate distances or times, it is all just accurately measured. The auto alerts make it so simple – you don't have to even look down at the watch at all because the vibrating can be felt through the wrist.

Then once I am finished the whole session is there to be looked at, recorded and analysed. So love on first swim it was!! Even more surprising for me though was when I took it to the pool. Again, as someone who has grown up in swim squads and pools and completely used to using swim clocks as second nature, I thought it might not be something I would use that much. However I have to admit to being wrong again. The ability to set paces and alerts is just priceless. And to be able to do that without trying to look at the clock, just feeling for the vibration makes staying on pace extremely easy (well as easy as staying on pace can be at this time of season).

The only problem with my training partner is that it is always brutally honest – will definitely tell you when you are having a good day or a bad day. There is just no hiding from the reality of the numbers!!

Stay healthy and keep working hard,

PIP