Polar V800 in the Pool

So here’s the thing. I am not all that great at reading directions.

Those who know me well are making sarcastic sounds indicating that this is the understatement of the year and I don’t blame them. It’s true! I learn by DOING. In fact, I once had a friend tell me: “Jess, you are not ready, set, fire…you are just FIRE!”

Recently, I bought a cabinet from my local Home Hardware and attempted to put it together without the instructions. It was a stunning display of ingenuity and creativity, involving every limb of my body and only about half the hardware included in the box. I am sure it wasn’t important anyways.. What is important is that it is more or less a functional piece of furniture for me, just missing a few crucial nuts and bolts.

When I get something new, I get excited and want to go out and use it or build it right away. Instructions take TIME. They get in the way of PROGRESS…and they also help things make sense.

I think it is high time for a Polar training update because I have learned a lot more about the watch as I have taken time to read instructions! I train with the Polar V800 and I posted a review of the watch itself here. 

A couple months of training with the watch and I have a lot more experience with and understanding of the capacities of the watch, even though I still learn new things it can do every day! Bottom line is that I have taken time to read the instructions. I have been spending a lot of time in the pool lately and it was one of the scariest things for me – getting used to the idea that the Polar can get wet and it will not affect it at all.

I wanted to talk a little bit about using the Polar V800 in the pool and some of the important components of training with it. Firstly, the watch comes pre-loaded with 6 settings: Running, Cycling, Swimming, Triathlon, Other Indoor and Other Outdoor. A fellow athlete who swims with me twice a week saw my watch and bought one over Christmas, only to point out to me that I was using the incorrect setting while swim training after she had a chance to test it out. Turns out, I had it on swimming because I had never added the extra sport profiles.

What do I mean? My watch syncs to a platform called Polar Flow and in my account, I can customize my watch anyway I desire. When I go to Sport Profiles, it allows me to add my favourite sports and change up the watch display for each one.

 

Once I added pool swimming, a magical thing happened. It began to automatically track the distance for me and even knew which stroke I was swimming. I am about as good at math as I am at reading instructions so this was magical to me as I no longer needed to tally up my swim distance.

Swim Features of the Polar V800

• Detects your swimming style
• Counts your stroke rate and measures pace and distance of your swim
• Identifies rest times
• Helps you analyze each pool length and phase of your swim session in PolarFlow web service
• Includes the SWOLF score that helps you improve your swimming technique and follow your progress

On Tuesdays, I swim a 25 m pool and on Thursdays, I swim a 50 m pool. The watch allows you to change the distance of the pool to any number which provides proper tracking. This is SO cool. Also, because I do heart rate training with my coach, I wear my heart rate monitor in the pool and the watch is able to pick it up no problem. It is fully water proof and built to track in any condition.

Speaking about heart rate monitors, something I learned something important to note about the monitor. I noticed that it was giving inaccurate readings after a couple months and when I talked to my rep, she said that because the piece of the heart rate monitor that attaches to the strap is Bluetooth, when it is connected to the strap, it is constantly searching for a signal, which drains the battery.

To remedy this, just unsnap it from the monitor from the strap and store them together so you don’t lose the piece and it will last much longer. (That piece is in the instructions too…)

If you want to learn more and hate reading instructions as much as I do, there is an entire learning centre on Polar’s website.

 

I will keep checking in with training updates and new discoveries. It is just a learning process when you are dealing with a watch that is smarter than you are…

Are you an instruction reader or a free ranger?

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