Swim breakthrough

Just a short post about the progression of my swim training. Erica looked at my stroke last year in September and fixed few things I discussed in earlier post. Working on these swim stroke issues helped quite a bit. Well the fact that I was in the pool 3-4 times a week since September probably plays role as well.

The more I swim the more I'm understanding the term - 'getting feel for the water'. I can now actually feel when my hand does not move efficiently or when I tilt my head or kick in the wrong way. So things definitely improved. And I also have some stats to back this claim up.

We have done testing on approximately monthly basis. The test protocol is fairly easy. After warm-up I swim 300 yd during which I build up to a pace I think I can sustain for the whole set. Then take 20 seconds breather by the wall and do 3x100 yd with 15s rest followed by 300 yd. The total time from the start of the first 300 yd to the finish of the last 300 yd counts as the test time. Here are the test results of the past tests from October to just few days ago.

• Oct 18^th - 15:55
  
• Nov 13^th - 15:50
  
• Jan 4^th - 14:39
  

My 100 yd and 200 yd splits have been coming down consistently and I feel very fast in the water. Although only until there are two swim team members swimming in the next lane. Obviously doing an easy warm-up while I struggle to keep up with them. But I'll eventually get there. I met with Erica just before Christmas and she suggested few more things to work on. I'll get faster in the water. I'm sure of it.

By the way the bike and run training is moving in the right direction as well. Craig had me doing some serious bike and run tempo work on the weekends. I feel that this is going to make me fast this season. I can't wait for the first tri race which will actually be the Black Bear half ironman in late May.

Polar RS800cx or Suunto T6c that is the question

How is that for controversial title? I have just recently received few question from people trying to decide between the two monitors. As you probably know I own both of them and do not plan to let one of them go any time soon. In fact I find both good at what they do, but if you have money just for one what should you do? Well you will need to decide for yourself, but this post will hopefully provide some information that make the decision easier.

I'll use the same format I used in the other comparison article in June of 2008 - Q: Garmin Forerunner 405 or Suunto T6c?. I made few changes to the T6c text reflecting my longer use of the watch. But most of it remains the same as 7 months ago. Note that I ultimately sold the Garmin Forerunner 405 on eBay after I got tired of it. I'm sticking with the RS800cx and T6c for now.

Training planning

Polar RS800cx - it will be of little surprise to readers of this blog, that I like the abilities to program variety of guided workouts in this watch. It offers so many options to structure workout that I have yet to find a workout I can not program in it. You name it - ladder intervals, sessions with various interval length, phases focusing in cadence, pace or HR. You can do it all. Do you need to workout for specific time or until your HR raises to specific HR, etc. So in training planning I really prefer the flexibility and functionality you get in RS800cx. You can define workout in the watch, but I prefer to use the Polar Pro Trainer 5 software to plan my training sessions.

Suunto T6c - has some planning capability in the software, but the guided workouts are to be defined directly in the watch. You can define warm-up duration, countdown duration (in case you want to do warmup, but not include it in the total exercise time), then there are two time intervals or you can use distance intervals (again only two). You can define how many times to repeat the intervals and that is it. I find this fairly good for less structured training sessions. So I use the T6c on simpler workouts - like tempo runs or recovery runs that are easily fit into the format of warm-up and two interval timers. (In June I wrote that I felt the RS800 was more robotic way to do the workouts - I do not feel that way these days. Perhaps I was on the edge of overtraining and needed to step back. The switch to T6c certainly helped that. These days I train with both and as I wrote above the RS800cx is for more structured sessions and T6c for sessions that have little less structure). The T6c is very similar in training planning abilities to S625X from Polar in terms of interval workouts.

Training

Polar RS800cx - what I like in RS800cx is the ability to define up to 3 pairs of shoes with different calibration factors. So you do not need to mess with the CF before each run if you decide to wear different shoes or just switch from road to treadmill. The actual execution of the training session is very well supported by the watch. It has very clear and loud beep when switching from one planned phase to another. Also the limits alarm beeps loud enough to hear it if you exercise with headphones. The watch provides information about many parameters of your session from overall perspective or individual laps. After each lap watch briefly displays the summary for the lap and if if is changing from one phase to another it shows the new phase title. This is very useful when you have multiple phases and in the middle of the exercise forget what is next - the watch will remind you. I also like the little repeat calculator in the right bottom part of the screen that shows you how many repeats of the phase or phases are remaining. It is very useful especially in case of interval training when you may miscount - yeah it happens to me all the time. Another great thing on the watch is the display. It shows bunch of data which can be overwhelming at times, so I tend to stick to 2-3 displays that I configured to provide the key information I need (jut FYI the watch has 6 displays you can configure yourself, one multi-sport display which is discussed later in this text and one display for count-down of the current phase). The count-down display shows the counter of the current phase with time remaining and information about the limits - e.g. HR, cadence, etc. Other stuff that you may like in this watch is the recording of your location if you use the G3 GPS sensor, recording of cadence both in cycling and running. There is more about this unit in the three detailed articles I wrote last year after I had the watch for few weeks. I will not go back to that discussion here.

There is doubt that this watch provides the most functionality out of any HRMs I owned so far. The only missing piece is the automatic switch between the sensors - like from bike to run. But the watch manages that OK. You can stop the exercise, switch to the other sensors and start a new session. The watch will prompt you if you want to combine exercises and if you do so it shows a new display for multi-sport workout. The display shows overall time, distance and calories burned in the combined session. You can combine multiple sessions into one and then review them later in the software.

Suunto T6c - works like a charm for running and biking (and with memory belt also OK for swimming). The watch is able to automatically switch between sensors (pods) if you use multiple in one session - bike pod, foot pod, GPS pod. Like in the triathlon race. The comfort HR belt is very nice - I find it even more ehm comfortable than the Polar WearLink+ and it works very well once you figure out which part to moisten. The watch has configurable screens - 2 screens 3 lines each and the last line can show multiple items that you can switch between. Other that that the watch displays the EPOC and TE on the fly, but I find these values less accurate than what you get later on the computer.

The really cool feature of this watch is the automatic switch between the sensors. I did a brick session and it recorded my bike speed / distance (as 18mph), then I did a lap for transition and headed out of the house for a short run. Before I hit the street it was already switched to my foot pod and was showing my pace 18:30/mi as I walked and soon 7:45/mi as I started running. It is pretty cool to see this working after struggling with this with Polar, previous Suunto and Garmin. This may not be as important for single sport athletes, but quite nice for triathletes. Especially if you want to have one less thing to care about in transition. That is also one reason T6c will remain in my collection. I plan on racing with it again this season.

Evaluation of training

I guess this sentence from original article summarizes it well: "Well compared to Polar software both Garmin and Suunto have a long way to go."

Polar RS800cx - Polar Pro Trainer 5 offers certainly the software with most bells and whistles for analysis of single workout or reporting over a defined period of time. I love the ability not only to define own sports, but for each to set the speed/pace units that I want to see in the graphs, different HR zones for each sport and the ability to define my own reports and customize how they look. You can easily take any set of HR zones and synchronize them to your watch in case you wanted to switch between them for cycling or running session. The calendar view and summary for the week is also quite useful and shows you actual vs planned - number of exercises, training time, distance and actual burned calories.

I also like the way Polar stores the log files in individual text file. I can modify the logs if I need to correct data from the session. Like this past weekend when I had an occurrence of CS600 not connected well with my HR belt. After the session I had all HR data in RS800cx log and all the power, cadence, speed data in the CS600 (but no HR). I simply took the logs opened them in text editor did one large copy/paste and saved the log. Everything was saved and I could do the analysis I needed to do with HR, power data. While I had few cases when CS600 did not capture my HR data I never had issue with RS800cx. If you are interested in R-R data analysis the RS800cx can capture the data and you can later analyze them in the Polar software (which has very limited analysis functions) or load them to other R-R analysis tools like FirstBeat Athlete or Kubios HRV.

Suunto T6c - the biggest difference between T6c and other HRMs is the analysis of your workouts to provide EPOC and TE. The standard STrM software does the basic analysis and shows you the data recorded by the watch - R-R data, HR, speed / distance and all the parameters the software calculates based on the R-R. I use also the FirstBeat Athlete software mostly to help me look at my EPOC load during the week and month. The STrM is not as flexible as PPT5 and while it allows definition of multiple sports it supports only one set of HR zones. I find the analysis capabilities of the software little limited compared to PPT5. The only exception is the TE and EPOC that Polar does not provide in their software. But if you use the FirstBeat Athlete you can get the EPOC and TE post workout if you load the R-R files to the software. I found the fine tuning of the parameters for the accurate EPOC/TE calculation somewhat complicated when I first got the watch. But that is no longer the case since Suunto published the manual from Eddie Fletcher that describes how to best setup the watch. Key is to determine your activity class based on your weekly training load and your VO2max either via lab test or based on field test or race result. The manual provides great examples and makes setting-up the watch much easier than before it was published.

Daily use as a watch

Polar RS800cx - I wore the RS800sd on daily basis for over a year and the RS800cx is the same 'format'. It fits well under shirt and can be used as daily watch. It is just a tiny bit smaller than the T6c, but it is hardly noticeable. The alarm of this watch works fine and can be snoozed for 10 minutes if you want to get more sleep.

Suunto T6c - It is a watch that you can use daily. It fits under the shirt and goes with pretty much any outfit (especially the black version that is not as flashy as the Fusion). I pretty much alternate between T6c and RS800cx as my daily watch. I do not mind wearing either one of them. You may prefer Suunto if you need multiple alarms to get out of the bed - T6c has 3 of them, but does not offer snooze.

Cost

Note that this section reflects the situation as of January 2008 and that I looked at prices on US market. The prices are likely to change over time so do your research, check sites that sell Polar and Suunto watches. I also strongly recommend to only buy from certified distributors and resellers of Polar and Suunto to prevent any warranty repair issues. Both Suunto and Polar confirmed in telephone that they honor warranty from Amazon.com where I made most of my purchases in the past few months of HRM shopping.

Polar RS800cx - the watch alone is now about 400 USD + tax. You can also buy a package with the watch and either S3 sensor for running (470 USD), multisport package with G3 sensor for 470 USD or bike package with bike speed sensor for 430 USD. The additional sensors go for 140 USD for the S3 foot pod, 130 USD for the G3 GPS sensor, 55 USD for cadence WIND sensor and 55 USD for bike speed sensor WIND. Do your math before you buy as certain combinations of packages and additional sensors could be less expensive than others.

Suunto T6c - The watch sells for 335 USD for Black version and 350 USD for Fusion version. The foot pod for 80 USD, bike pod for 50 USD, the road bike pod for 57 USD and lastly the GPS pod for about 150 USD. Suunto also offers various packs with T6c - Triathlon pack with all you need for triathlon including memory belt for 660 USD, Running pack with T6c and foot pod for 470 USD and Multisport pack with GPS sensor (does not capture location) for 530 USD.

Conclusion?

Well you will need to make one for yourself. If you can go look at both models in the store or at the race expo and test them out before you purchase. They are both very good HRMs and will help you structure your training. As for me I'm going to keep both of them on my wrist as I train. One at a time to be exact. I will cotinue to use the T6c for less structured sessions and RS800cx for sessions that are more complex. I will continue to run road races with RS800cx and do triathlons with T6c. Let me know if this helped a bit in your decision making.

Update (13/1/09): In case you want to read more about the RS800cx you may like to review few earlier articles on this blog:

RS800CX - more detailed review of the functions I.
RS800CX - more detailed review of the functions II.
Analysis of training data (part 3 of RS800CX reviews)

There are also few articles about Suunto T6c that I published earlier.

Protect your investment

So you have got yourself the gadget you wanted so much. Now you are starting to use it and discover its capabilities. You exercise with it and sometimes even wear it the whole day. That's all good and well, but did you happen to think about protecting your investment. It is no fun to find dings or scratches on the watch face after just few weeks or months of use. I actually experienced that first hand with the Suunto T6c Fusion I bought earlier this year. The watch suffered two dings and few small scratches on the face, even with Suunto stating that the watch has mineral glass that should be fairly resilient to abuse.

Most of the newly designed HRMs leave the watch face unprotected. Older models like Polar S625X, S725X, Suuto T6 had raised edge that protected the watch from accidental hits. The new watches like Polar RS400, Polar RS800 / RS800cx or Suunto T6c do not have this protection. While I have only the best experience with durability of the RS800 model I did not want to take any risk with my new gadgets. Looking through the discussion forums I came across ZAGG Invisible Shield protection foil. Apparently this is thin plastic foil that you install on the face of the watch and it will protect it from accidental damage. It does not protect any other part of the watch, but in my experience the glass is what gets damaged most often. Few weeks ago I installed foil protection on my new Suunto T6c and about a week later I got another foil to protect my Polar RS800cx.

The installation procedure is very simple, but you will want to plan about 15-20 minutes for it. You will also want to do the installation in the comfort of your home or office. You will also need to have very clean hands when installing the foil - it may be easy to get your fingerprints all over the foil or watch if you do not clean them up front. You will also need to clean the watch from any sweat or smudges before you begin. Then follow the instructions and apply the provided spray on your hands. Spray the foil and put it in place. Then slowly and diligently press out the bubbles out of the foil and make sure it fits well. If you do not get it the first time just take it off and start over. I had to repeat installation on the RS800cx three times before I got it right. With the angled face it is somewhat more difficult to install the RS800cx foil that the T6c foil, but ultimately they both get installed in about 10 minutes. After you are happy with the install, dry off the remaining spray from the watch and set it aside for few hours. ZAGG recommends 12 hours, but I used mine in workout the next morning after the install - so about 8-9 hours later with no issues. Below are two pictures - first one of RS800cx with the ZAGG foil and the second Suunto T6c with the foil. Note that the pictures are extreme close-ups of the watch. In reality you can not see the edges of foil on any of the watches.

The foil works fine during the day. You can not really see that the watch has a protective foil on its face unless you are looking for it. In low light conditions the Suunto T6c gets little dim as the back light seems to be weaker than to one on RS800cx. I used the watch during ride to the shop in the evening and it was little hard to see the time when I switched on the back light (note I did not even try this while running when the watch actually flickers). Otherwise I did not determine any issues with the protection foil. I have exercised with both HRMs inside, outside and wore each one of them for few days as a regular watch. I highly recommend the 10-20 bucks investment to protect the watch that is most likely 20-30 times as expensive to replace. ZAGG also makes protection foil for cell phones, MP3 players and computers. But I have not tried one yet. If I were to buy a new iPod today I would definitely put Invisible Shield on it to protect it. It would prevent bunch of scratches that I have on my iPods after the abuse they get through during the almost daily use.

Location info on the Polar RS800cx

This is just a short note for the few people that are interested to see how the location information appear on the screen of the RS800cx during the exercise. As I wrote in my other articles here, here and here the RS800cx tracks location, but it does not display map or outline. It only shows the location coordinates as captured by the GPS unit and the number of satellites it has acquired (lower right corner). Below is the picture of the location screen.

You can access this screen from the pre-exercise or exercise pause screen. You get to the pre-exercise screen following ways:

• Start from time screen and click the red start/lap button once. Wait for the unit to connect to the HR belt and then scroll to options and make sure the GPS is on. Switch on the G3 unit and wait for the watch and unit to start communicating. Once the connection is there and G3 acquires satellites the watch will display message 'Satellites found'. Now new option 'Location' appears in the menu. When you select it the above screen will appear.
  
• Second way to get to this screen is from exercise mode. We assume that you exercise with GPS switched on and that the GPS unit communicates with the watch. Press the Stop button once to get to the pause screen. Then scroll down to the Location option and it will give you the location information.
  

It is fairly easy to use although it provides only basic location data. I do not really use this - well maybe except than to check whether the G3 has satellite connection and how many satellites it acquired. From Polar materials it is clear that the watch is not capable of navigation like the Garmin HRM units (Forerunner 305 / 405 or Edge 705) or X9i / X10 from Suunto. But that is not what it was designed for. I guess what it means is that if you seriously need navigation capabilities you may need to look at other unit or get a backup GPS navigation unit in your backpack. These days they put the GPS chips into pretty much everything. I have one in my cell phone, I have seen them in kids shoes and even pet collars.

Christmas gifts and little about running shoes

First of I want to wish every reader of this blog a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I hope your holidays are peaceful and that you are enjoying time with your family as much as I do.

I love going to the Christmas tree after dinner (in our tradition we open presents after dinner on Christmas Eve). It was great day for all of us and we found really nice gifts under the tree. One of the gifts that may interest readers of this blog is pair of new running shoes (surprise not a new HRM - although I got one for Christmas as well and I'm very grateful for it). But back to the shoes - I wished for a pair of Newton running shoes - the neutral racer to be exact. And that is exactly what I found under the tree.

The shoes come with a pair of Newton socks and a little bag to carry them. It is a nice touch for such high price item. I took them for a short spin today. It was a nice day for running with temperature around 5 degrees Celsius with little cold breeze so it was fairly nice out and the roads were not as messy as they were over the past few days.

Today's training session consisted of 15 minutes of warm-up followed by four sets of faster than 5k pick-ups with 2 minutes of easy running and closed with about 5 minutes cool-down. The shoes are designed to promote mid-foot strike which I already have so it was very easy to get running in them and it felt even more natural than in regular running shoes. I felt the extra padding on the mid-foot which actually feels quite nice during the run regardless of whether it is flat, up or down-hill. I took picture of the sole if you have not seen it (I mean this is by no means breaking news the shoes have been on the market for quite a while). Another thing - these shoes are feather light. The shoe is way lighter than my Nike Zooms that I used for up to half marathon races and feel like the Newtons provide better padding. It feels like having additional spring under my mid-foot.

Here is the detail of the forefoot area with the orange lugs that make you land on forefoot.

But back to the run. I found myself to be quite fast already during the warm-up. The 1 mile segment that is first downhill and later uphill usually takes me little over 9 minutes. Today I did it in 8:30 and had to remind myself few times to slow down. Amazingly my heart rate during the whole warm-up did not go over zone 2 which shows that the shoes are fast while not making you work harder. I guess I'll need to observe this more, but it seems like the shoe helps you be more economical. E.g. I was running faster than usual with HR lower than usual. Obviously there may be other explanations like the fact that I'm more rested now in the off-season. That's why I will look into this more and report back.

On the pick-ups I was able to pick the pace quite comfortably and the run felt very natural. I was landing perfectly on my mid-foot. Again not a big deal for me since I run like that even in regular shoes, but in the Newtons it feels more natural. It is probably due to the lugs on the mid-foot. Overall I did about 4 miles in them and felt very good. I will post any new findings as I progress to wear these wonders. Until then I give the Newtons a big thumb up.

TrainingPeaks now support mapping for Polar RS800CX

I wanted to blog this few weeks ago when the development team of WKO+ and TrainingPeaks contacted me if I would test some RS800CX related functionality for them. But back then I promised to keep my mouth shut until they had a final version of the WKO+ and announcement ready. Oh well then there was the marathon in Philly, lots of work in the office and all of a sudden we are few weeks later and I'm only getting to this.

It was more of a coincidence as I raised a support ticker with the Peaksware about the ability to import location data from RS800cx to WKO+ and TrainingPeaks. I wanted to use the functions they provide for any GPS logs like fixing the elevation data. I was pleasantly surprised when the development team contacted me few days later and provided early version of the WKO+ that supported the direct load from RS800cx to the WKO+. I did some test runs and loaded them to the TrainingPeaks and it all looked good. My only reservation is that the resulting log when loaded to the website shows only location information with no details about lap times, lap location, etc that you can get from PPT5 and GoogleEarth. So the result is not as useful for log analysis as what the PPT5 or WKO+ offer, on the other hand TrainingPeaks has ability to share workouts with others via e-mail or Facebook. So if you use WKO+ and TrainingPeaks you get best of both worlds - analysis of individual laps and ability to share workouts with others. With this functionality in TrainingPeaks you can easily link to your workout or race record from Facebook or send the log to your friends via e-mail.

Don't get me wrong I like the TrainingPeaks log viewer as it provides quite a lot of data for everyone to look at - practically all data your HRM can capture and if you want to re-live the entire 4 hours of your marathon experience (or whatever event you did) you can chose to view it as a replay at the same speed as it was recorded (or speed it up if you do not have 4 hours to watch...). I just wish it also showed lap times and added lap location to the map - perhaps in the next update (I hope Peaksware team reads this)..

I have captured recent race with RS800cx and loaded it to the TrainingPeaks. Click on the picture below to view the TrainingPeaks log if you want to see how the log file looks once it is loaded to TrainingPeaks. You can play around with it,no worries I will not see what you did and you can not mess-up the workout log. It is only a viewer after all.

If you wondered about what Polar offers - well currently there is no support for location info on the Polar Personal Trainer site. The only HRM company that I know provides similar service at no cost to users is Garmin with their Garmin Connect site. I used the site when I had Garmin 405 and did not find it very useful beyond sharing the workout data with friends. I much prefer the combination of training planning / logging site with ability to share info than site that is built to share data only. But the Garmin Connect site is quite nice and many users find it sufficient for their needs. I only hope they already fixed the bug with average speed/pace that only took the last lap into account so your tempo workout showed overall average pace that was equal to the last lap pace. Perhaps Polar will introduce mapping and sharing capability over time as they seem to be re-working the site quite a bit. But I don't really know if I would use it since I'm already loading my data for my coach to TrainingPeaks...

Just keep swimming

Well the title says it all - after the marathon Erica and Craig had me swim a lot and do some biking. I have been in the pool three times every week and I really enjoy the swim sessions in the pool. Erica keeps my swims interesting and mixes in a good balance of drills, speed work and longer segments. But we keep everything under 300 yd in one go which is what I need. I get easily bored.

One of the interesting elements we did this week is the Locomotive which keeps the 300 yd interesting - basically the locomotive is alternating easy and hard pace on increasing distance segments - you start with 25 easy, then do 25 hard then repeat the ez/hard for 50 yd distance and last the same for 75 yd. You can also do reverse locomotive which is the same drill in reverse - starting with 75 hard / 75 easy and so on. I really like these ez/hard combinations. They make the time in the pool fly by so fast. I have been really enjoying the swims this time of the year and like the way I'm getting the feel for the water. I can actually feel the water as I swim and feel the difference between different positions of my hand on entry and pull, feel the water resistance depending on how my body is positioned and recently I started to get hang of the kicking. Kicking is something that I still need to work on quite a lot as I tend to not kick much during the swim. And yes my times for 100 yd swim have been dropping down which is great. I hope this will continue through out the winter and my swim will get better in next season.