Long-term Swim performance tracking

Radu Negoescu

Hi everyone,

New poster here, so apologies if this has been discussed at length already (would appreciate a link). I’m using a Suunto 9 Baro.

Main issue: tracking swimming-specific measures progress over time

There is currently (Feb 2020) no way in the SA to track progress in swimming over a period of time. Pace/speed/Avg HR for the past 30 days are hardly an accurate representation of performance, at least for the casual swimmer that I am (3 to 4 times a week, 1km at most).

MCW allows me to select multiple swim sessions and compare a range of measures (but not SWOLF). For example:

Incidentally, VO2 is not displayed in SA at all - and I haven’t even been able to get the new “Fitness level” feature to work, but that’s a whole other story.

Secondary issue: incompatibility of FIT files with outside services such as Swim.com
It is also currently impossible to export “moves” to another service focused on swimming, such as swim.com - the FIT files produced by SA (or MCW for that matter) are simply incompatible with swim.com (who apparently heavily use the Garmin “way” of recording them - a full detailed explanation by the creator of fftrepair was provided to both companies last year to no results).

How do others track their swimming progress? What am I missing?

Thanks in advance for any insights
Radu

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

Just a thing to note. Est Vo2 is not the fitness level: Est Vo2max that is the firstbeat propertiary thing

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

@Radu-Negoescu said in Long-term Swim performance tracking:

Secondary issue: incompatibility of FIT files with outside services such as Swim.com
It is also currently impossible to export “moves” to another service focused on swimming, such as swim.com - the FIT files produced by SA (or MCW for that matter) are simply incompatible with swim.com (who apparently heavily use the Garmin “way” of recording them - a full detailed explanation by the creator of fftrepair was provided to both companies last year to no results).

I did check and swim.com is indeed not accepting the FIT files so I raised this issue.

However other services do accept our FIT files and there is nothing wrong with the FIT file format, I can assure you as I am a developer on this field (not for Suunto) and have written all the decoding libraries in Javascript that modern web uses.

I raised this issue because the problem most probably is on swim.com possibly using some old libraries or something else.

Radu Negoescu

@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos any of these other services focused on swimming? I don’t have a crush on swim.com or anything, but I’m not really able to find anything.

As for the FIT file, then perhaps this is for you:
"From: Mathias Krallmann <@>
Date: Tue, Feb 19, 2019 at 1:43 PM
Subject: Re: fitfilerepairtool.info
To: Radu Negoescu <@>

Hi Radu,

Garmin Connect rejects your original file, but it accepts a version of your file after it passed FFRT (Fit File Repair Tool).

I invested an awful lot of time in making swim data fit files compatible with Garmin Connect. One of the clues is the sequence of rest times and laps.
Garmin Connect requires a lap change after a rest length if I remember correctly.
Suunto doesn’t follow these inofficial (!) rules of a swim data fit file. I can’t say if swim.com uses the same rules that Garmin follows."

Emphasis mine. It seems like a reasonable assumption to have a lap change after a rest (at least in a swimming pool!) - but then again, what do I know?

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

@Radu-Negoescu Well there is a way to force these laps and we do do that for EG strava.

Api wise we have flat laps and filler laps , or specific lap types.

However, when a user downloads a FIT file he gets the full blown format.

I could help here via my app that can proxy a download from the Suunto api via those params.

Give me sometime and I ll try to check if I can deploy this later today.

the app is quantified-self.io FYI and there is a services place that proxys the FIT file. Right now it has the common params (no flat laps etc what I talked about before) and that is what I need to change if you want to test how this works for you.

Radu Negoescu

@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos appreciate the offer - willing to give it a spin.

I didn’t realise you were quantified-self! I learnt about it via twitter at some point, used it, then forgot where it was and couldn’t find it anymore!

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

@Radu-Negoescu do you want to pm me an SA pool swim ? (or paste it here I suppose its ok for privacy since no GPS data).

Then I ll play a bit with what swim.com accepts.

At the same time our Partner B2B team will have a chat again with swim.com

To update you, they (both Suunto and swim.com) are aware of the issue

Which I personally find it strange, like , come on guys noone can implement the fix?

Radu Negoescu

@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos couldn’t agree more with “come on guys” Especially since Suunto are eager to expand their reach and partnerships. Granted, it could be that swim.com are following a “weird” format but it happens to be the dominant one as far as I understand, so if Suunto wanted to chip away at Garmin’s market share, it’s in their best interest to be compatible with whatever quirks Garmin have (perhaps intentional?). Then again, there’s many sports but still, swimming is one of the top … 5 I would assume? Maybe not … no idea. It is number 2 for me though and that’s frustrating me a bit.

Anyway.

Swimming_2020-01-20T08_11_29.fit
Swimming_2020-02-18T08_15_59.fit

I’ve attached two SA exported FITs. The more recent one is a 800+200, formally paused record (that is, swam 800m, hit pause, hit resume, swam 200m). The older one is a continuous record (no formal pauses on recording, as far as I recall), so recording rests too - which, by the way, leads to some strange (in my opinion) computations in SA. They compute the pace on TET (total elapsed time) / distance, which leads to an even slower pace than what I swim as it counts rests in. Different issue, really.

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

@Radu-Negoescu Would love to get the SA link please so I can try to pull with modifying params. Thanks !

That is because the fit file is already generated wit the laps problem you mentioned.

nseslija

@Radu-Negoescu in regard to pace computing, I always thought that I could see both values in SA, total elapsed time and time…

Radu Negoescu

@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos done, sent them over “chat”

Radu Negoescu

@nseslija yes, you can see both, but you see that your main screen activity swim pace is off (1.58/100 rather than 1.56 or lower - btw, I realise you didn’t want to show off but damn I like that pace! ) simply because you took a few seconds to breathe before ending the workout. That doesn’t really make sense to me but maybe I’m wrong.

nseslija

@Radu-Negoescu maybe you are right, it would be best to see both times on main screen, but this is enough for me…
And pace time… I didn’t show off :-)… I am not really proud with the pace, need to work, a lot, on my technique… still new to swimming… but thank you anyway…