Latest Garmin update for the fenix3

There is a new OS update for the fenix 3 doanloaded earlier this week. It's caused the watch to freeze 3 times now, basically a similar issue to what happened when I downloaded a watch face from the App Store. Not sure if there will be a fix coming soon, but hopefully it won't take too long as I've stopped wearing the watch as its a pain to have to reboot every time the watch face freezes!

Parkrun - a great way to get fit and stay fit

Had to share this story, you can see it and others at www.parkrun.com.au...

‘I Run!’ by Chrys Stevenson

As I stood at the starting line of the Golden Beach parkrun with 150 other runners, I thought to myself, “How the hell did I get myself into this?” Less than two years ago I was a proud couch potato. I weighed 129 kg and wore size 24 jeans. I was a keen equestrian in my teen years, but I never ran – not even as a child. Sports days at high school were spent in “Detention Room C” as I refused to participate in physical activities. I called myself a ‘conscientious objector’! In August 2013, after more than two decades as an obese adult, I decided it was time to shed the fat suit. Now in my mid-50s, I had reconnected with a man I dated in my 20s. He made no demands upon me to lose weight, but I decided my body no longer reflected how I felt about myself. It was time to change. As a skeptic, I rejected fad diets, elimination diets, expensive weight loss programs and home-delivered frozen foods. Instead I determined that weight loss was a simple matter of mathematics: burn more calories than you eat. I modified (rather than revolutionised) my diet, reduced portion sizes, filled my oversized wine glass with soda water or Diet Coke instead of Sauvignon Blanc and joined the local gym. I committed to doing some kind of exercise every day; walking, swimming, light weights - even gardening. The kilos quickly melted off and my fitness level improved. I maintained a steady weight-loss of 1kg per week; I was regularly walking 5km and could swim 25 laps of the Olympic pool. I was no athlete but I was fitter than I’d ever been in my life. Once I reached my goal weight, my gym trainer encouraged me to run. Run? I couldn’t run! Was he mad? At first I ran with all the grace of a tranquilised giraffe. But, soon, I fell into a rhythm. It wasn’t long before I graduated from running half the length of the gym’s carpark to a gentle 850m jog into the local village – and then, back! By now I had shed a massive 65 kg – half my original body weight! I’d gone from Size 24 to Size 10-12. My weight-loss goal achieved, my trainer urged me to set a new challenge. I decided I’d try to run 5 km without stopping by Easter 2015. I wrote it in texta and pinned it to the notice board in the gym. I hadn’t yet run 5 km. The best I’d achieved was 3.9. Could I go the distance? I didn’t know. A chance meeting on Facebook with a parkrunner from South Africa alerted me to the Golden Beach parkrun. It seemed like a good chance to achieve my goal. Perhaps running with others would give me the extra adrenaline boost I needed to run that extra kilometre. “Go!” yelled the event director and I took off in the middle of the pack. Soon, the fastest runners began passing me. Then people who were clearly older and (ahem) larger than me trotted past, followed by people with dogs, ladies with prams and (oh, the humiliation) seven year old children! At one point I looked behind me and there was no-one there. I was dead last of the runners. It did occur to me to pull out there and then and save myself the embarrassment of finishing last, but I decided there was more disgrace in not completing the course. So, I kept on at my slow, but steady pace; a tortoise amongst a leap of hares. I reached the half way point and looped back on the home run. Now (as someone at my gym had promised me) I began passing some of the runners who’d started too fast and were running out of puff. That spurred me on - not only could I run, I could pass people! I finished the course having maintained the same steady 8 km/hour pace throughout. I was slow, but I didn’t stop or walk once. “38 minutes and 44 seconds!” yelled the time-keeper as I crossed the finish line and the crowd applauded and shouted, “Well done!” I was reminded of the t-shirt that reads, “I run. I’m slower than a herd of turtles stampeding through peanut butter, but I run!” I run! Who knew I could do that? Now I’m thinking, “Maybe I could run a bit faster …”

Portarlington race review

The portarlington tri is the 4th race in the Gatorade series and their longest sprint distance race. Apparently this was the 29th running of the portarlington tri and the winner of the inaugural event was competing in my age group! This race is longer than the others in the series as its supposed to help competitors step up to Olympic distance in the final race of the year (coming up on the 30th). Consequently it was the longest race I had done in my very short time doing triathlon. Being a few hrs out of Melbourne, the majority of competitors stay somewhere on the peninsula and so have a short ride, walk or commute to the venue. We ended up booking a house in portarlington so I had a short drive to the foreshore where there is plenty of parking. The venue itself is great although the transition area is right at the bottom of a hill so your riding and running up a hill before you get onto a relatively flat course - something I should have taken better notice of when setting up for the race.

For me I was not worried about finishing the distance, though an 800m ocean swim was further than I'd swum in the ocean before and the swim leg is easily my worst leg. I figured with the relatively flat course I would be able to make up time on the ride and the run, particularly given my run had continued to improve over the season and I was now regularly clocking under 5min/klm pace. I didn't count on having an upset stomach though and this made it a race where I was never going to get close to my PB's in anything other than race distances. I had checked out the setup on the Garmin the night before and figured it was all setup and ready to go. Start the triathlon app as you go into the swim, hit lap at the start and finish of each transition and stop at the end. Easy! Mostly the watch worked great but for some reason,at the end of the event, the swim details don't have any map associated. It seems to have largely got the distance correct (if you assume that walking and porpoising in the water is not counted as swimming by the watch), but it didn't send distance details to strava when it synced. I'm not entirely sure what happened as it picked up map details for the other two legs. The only thing I can think of is that while I was waiting in the water for my swim wave to start, I started the app, made sure we had a gps signal (which came through really quickly) and then didn't think about it again until just before the starting hooter sounded and I realized my watch had reverted back to a normal watch. I hit start again just as the hooter sounded, saw it was on the triathlon app, hit start again to start the app, then one more time to get the little green triangle (like "play" on your CD player) which seems to be what the Fenix3 displays to indicate an app has started. I figured all would be fine but as I mentioned, it didn't seem to track the swim and produce a swim map, though it may have been down to user error, but I probably won't know till my next open water swim.

In terms of the race, the start was good and I felt good for the first 200m of the swim before making the turn at the end of the pier. While we had been waiting for our start the wind had whipped up and so as we turned, we turned into some reasonable swell. I struggled for the 300m out the front of the pier and then when we turned back to shore I took a short rest and felt good for the final 200m or so. IHowever in the swell  had swallowed a heap of water - in fact so much that I walked the last 30 meters into shore (or maybe the tide was out, it was either that or me drinking it all, who can tell). I guess I could have swum the last little bit and I'm not sure which would have been faster, but there is something about having your feet on (relatively) firm ground when your a poor swimmer. Headed into T1 and the watch says I was over 4 minutes - poor! It may well have been though as I had to put on socks and I came out of the water a little slower than I probably should have for no other reason than a lack of concentration. I got the bike gear on and ran out past the mount line and realized I had made a real rookie mistake. I had the wrong gear selected for trying to start on a hill and wasted about 2 minutes trying to get my feet in the pedals and get going up the hill. But once I was going the legs felt good. Unfortunately the stomach didn't. I felt really bloated from the seawater and really wanted to throw up. I didn't, but managed to burp up a lot of sea water over the next few klm's (sorry if your eating your breakfast!). Whilst my legs were feeling good, the 20-30klm/hr southerly was now squarely in my face, and remained so up to about the 13-14 klm mark, so I tired quickly. However when we turned off the coats road we turned into the only hilly part of the course, so whilst my speed increased, it wasn't considerable and it took a bit more from my legs. I was starting to feel ok though and was getting through my Gatorade which I usually carry on the bike for a little carb intake during the bike leg. The last 7 klm's I was motoring and managing to average over 35klm/hr and was actually feeling quit good. Into T2 and as soon as I started running it all fell apart. My stomach started cramping along with my left calf and as I walked up the stairs out of the transition area I felt really disheartened, thinking I might have to walk the whole way to get this done. I started a "Cliffy young" shuffle and managed to get a few klm's down the road. I couldn't stand straight because of my stomach, though my calf had come good and my legs felt fine by about 3 klm in. The stomach never quite recovered and consequently my run leg was pretty poor, though when I looked at the times I actually thought it was going to be worse than it was. So I finished feeling not so good with a very average time, but I did finish and I had a couple of good lessons learnt.

1. Be more careful about what you eat the night before, particularly if your allergic to anything.

2. Know something about the course and select the right gear for your bike before you get on it and try riding!

Garmin Fenix 3 - Day 8

I read an article yesterday on the Apple watch in Smart company. You can see the full article here.

There seems to be a common thought emerging from a number of tech analysts which makes me think most of them can't think outside the current leaders in this space (being Apple and Samsung...or perhaps Microsoft). What the analysts seem to be missing is the fact that the whole smart watch revolution will be about data. So the people that are going to pick this up first may not be the normal "bleeding edge" tech savvy people that bought the first iPhone, but sports people are all about tracking data to improve their fitness/sport. Seems the geek bloggers don't understand the audience that demand for these devices are going to be driven by.

At the end of a week wearing the watch full time I have to say I really enjoy the smart notifications, its a functional watch and the only down side is, as an everyday watch, its quite large. Though having said that I know that there are plenty of people wearing gigantic watches on their wrists these days. I'm just not used to having my sleeve unable to fit over the top of my watch!

Garmin fenix - day 7

Battery is at 44% at the moment. I've used a little more today due to the run session from this morning when I had the watch running for about an hour in the run "app". That clearly takes more battery than if your not connected to satellites!

Satellite connection was a tiny bit slower than the other day, but I think it was probably faster than my 910. Jury is still out on this point though and I'd like to connect a few more times before I make any judgement. Note I have glonass turned on at this point, so I assume it should be faster to get satellite reception.

Not much to add from my run session this morning. It was dark so I didn't look at the watch until I got home. I do like the little summary you get at the end of the run though and everything associated with a session has become easier (except the actual running) with the different interface and fenix3 buttons.

Though speaking of it being dark, I was out last night at a Cirq de solei (great show by the way) and couldn't read the time but just flick on the back light and the time becomes easily viewable - try doing that with your standard analogue (though I'm conscious that I could do that with my digital watch that I bought in 1985 when digital watches were all the rage).

No more sessions scheduled now till Sunday morning. I plan on wearing the watch during my race and trialling the new "triathlon" app on the watch. I havent worn my watch in a race before so hopefully the wet suuit arm won't get stuck while I'm trying to transition to the bike leg. But then again, my transition times are so woeful it will hardly make a difference!

Garmin fenix 3 - day 6

We had the funky unresponsive issue again today. This time at exactly 12.05pm. Reset fixed it and I decided to change back to the analogue watch face that comes with the device rather than the downloaded app from the App Store. My assumption at the moment is that the downloaded watch face has a bug in it, but I will know more tomorrow at around 12!

Used the watch swimming tonight. Once again really easy to start. Just hit start, select the swim app, then pool swim then get in the pool hit start again and start swimming! The only issue seemed to be that I lost 25m in every 100 I swam. This also happened when I first started using my 910 so am wondering whether it needs to get to know your stroke (or something). The last 200m it seemed to measure correctly so we will see how it goes in the race on Sunday. One thing that was a real improvement on the 910 was when you stopped each set and hit the lap button, it told you the distance of the last set and started a timer so you can see how long you are resting. So if you want to put 10 seconds (or whatever time your training plan requires) in between each set then this is perfect. I did find the screen a little difficult to read with my goggles on but I had the same issue with the 910, so it's not a backward step and given my goggles have a tint it's probably more to do with my goggles than the watch. Turning on the backlight for a few seconds seemed to help a little (and turning on the backlight is as easy as touching the on/off button).

Once again the swim uploaded as soon as I got to my locker and my phone connected to the Garmin. It then sent my swim details directly to Garmin connect and Garmin connect then sent it straight to strava. Before I had changed out of my togs I had comments on strava! For anyone (like me) that loves to see the data on the net this is great! 

Also noticed today that the other apps that I had downloaded are now on the watch. So somehow, someway, they have automatically downloaded to the watch! Also noticed that there was a watch update available today but once again, the download continued to fail. So I assume if I just leave it eventually it will find a way to download to the watch. Will see in a few days.

You may have noticed that the apple watch was announced today. There was an idiot at tech geek or one of the other blogger sites that said the apple watch was going to kill any demand for the fenix3. Now that I've looked at the specs for the apple watch I have to say I don't think so. The only thing that might cause you to buy an apple watch is the apple App Store which will no doubt be significantly better than the Garmin App Store. But if you want the watch as a sports watch, the apple watch doesn't come close. So I don't think Garmin has anything to worry about. The other reason to buy a Garmin rather than an apple is the battery life. I recharged the battery to 100% overnight on Saturday. Now, 4 full days later and with a couple of exercise sessions done and dusted, the battery is showing 57%. I have to say that's pretty impressive, particularly given I've been getting quite a few notifications so the watch is buzzing quite a bit and the Bluetooth connection doesn't seem to be causing too many issues with the battery life. The apple watch battery will barely last a day. No contest.

Garmin Fenix 3 - Day 5

Something a little bit funky happened with the watch today! At the stroke of 12 the watch starting vibrating and would not respond to any buttons. The only way to get it to being responding again was to reset it (hold the light button for greater than 25 seconds). It restarted and didn't seem to have an issue after that. I was using one of the downloaded watch faces so I don't know if that was an issue with the app or the watch. Regardless its clearly a bug with one or the other! First time its happened though so I'm not sure why it was different today to any other day.

I also had an opportunity to use the music controls while I was in the car. Seems that these controls only work within iTunes. While I was playing music in iTunes (actually using iTunes radio) i was able to pause, rewind and fast forward. It worked beautifully. However if I was playing a podcast and I hit the play button on my watch, it would immediately start the iTunes app and begin playing the last song. So it doesn't work for playing podcast or e-books.

Have been refining the notifications I receive and now only receiving work notifications and a few others (like Facebook and phone). This works well during my day as I can see in a meeting when I get any important text/emails without taking my phone out and also get notified of upcoming meetings. Those notifications can sometimes be missed if I'm out and about and not sitting at my desk so I'm finding that quite handy.

No exercise today so no testing of the watch in action - hoping to swim tomorrow so that should be a good test and the first time I've put the watch in the water!