Tag: gear

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Open Water Training in 2025

This post contains Amazon Associate (Affiliate) Links. Should you order from those links I would receive a small commission.

Beggars can’t be choosers, I always say. Between wanting to train up for the 2025 Cultus Lake Triathlon (the Vancouver Triathlon was sold out before I got my act together), and wanting to swim 10k in August to raise money for the Canadian Cancer Society (please consider donating), I knew I had to start getting some open water training in – my pool sessions from earlier in the season weren’t going to cut it.

Training in the Havel in Northern Berlin, proved challenging however – there’s lots of boat traffic, including river cruises, and the weeds grow thick and right up to the surface.

I used to track swims with a Garmin watch, but between keeping track of the charging cable and software reinstallations, I just can’t be bothered anymore. I felt I didn’t need that many serious metrics for most training tracking and I could get by with my phone for biking and running; but what about swimming?

I decided to look into wearing my phone in a waterproof pouch that would rest on my back, hopefully near the surface.

The pouch has 3 ziplock seals on it that are then folded over each other. I can say it did a good job protecting my phone, but I’m not so sure the tracking worked well.

I mean, I know I don’t swim perfectly straight, but that’s a little ridiculous. My wife began to worry about getting caught in the weeds and the boat traffic, so I opted to look into buying a swim buoy. I found one that could also house the phone.

I had hopes that with the tether attached to the underside of the inflatable buoy the phone would stay on top and thus track distance perfectly. Unfortunately the weight of the phone made the buoy flip upside down and the pouch was facing downward. I opted to flip it back upright at every turn-around to guarantee the location would be tracked at end points.

Looks like the location tracking worked better, but that moving time measurement is completely bogus – each of these swims was 20 min. I do recommend using a device like this though, as a just in case you get tired floation device in addition to making you more visible to boats or loved ones spotting you from shore.

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Gear Review: Shokz Open Swim Pro (Bone Conduction Headphones)

Bone conduction (or Open-Ear) headphones transmit sound by inducing jawbone vibrations, freeing your ears to hear outside sounds. This makes them ideal for women runners who, unfortunately, need to be more aware of threats when running alone. My wife has enjoyed a pair of Shokz for years, but I was intrigued when I heard of a waterproof version.

From the Shokz website: Transducers send vibrations through the cheekbones and deliver sound directly to the inner ear, bypassing the eardrum.

Overall First Impressions/Controls

I’m not an audiophile, but I had trouble believing that this technology could produce the same quality of sound as regular earphones. My favourite songs sounded the same.

The only controls are two volume buttons on the right side, and a “multi-function” on the left. The multi-function has to be pressed a combination of times to advance or go back a track, held down to enter pairing mode, etc. The volume buttons are used to power the device on/off in addition to obviously controlling the volume.

Normally I prefer to have more dedicated controls rather than memorizing combinations to accomplish basic tasks, but I can see how not having to fumble around searching for the right button when the headset is being worn is actually more practical and user-friendly.

Bike Test

My first test of the OpenSwim Pro was on a bike ride. Normally, headphones would be a big no-no on the bike, but the open ear should mean that a rider can maintain situational awareness. On this ride, the way out was mostly downhills and steep ones at that, so I didn’t listen to music at all, because I wanted my full attention on handling my bike through the turns and such. I had planned to listen to music to motivate me up the steep climbs home. Unfortunately, I remembered to turn on the music a little late, but for the last stretch, I did notice that I could hear a car come up behind me as I rode.

Run Test

I brought the headphones with me on a run around the track at the town stadium. I had the music playing while I used the bathroom before my run – what was interesting is when I used the hand dryer, I couldn’t hear the music anymore. So loud sound coming in your ears will override the music coming in through your jawbone vibrations.

During the run, I was able to have conversation with my wife when I passed her on the track without turning down (or off) the music.

Swim Test

So the headphones are waterproof, but that doesn’t mean they can connect to Bluetooth while in the water – this is made clear by the manufacturer. So for swimming, you use them as an MP3 player; remember those? You have to load MP3 or other audio files from a computer over the USB cable to the memory of the OpenSwim Pro. MP3s are getting a little hard to come by, but I still had some songs loaded on my phone (in unprotected m4a format from iTunes) that I loaded onto my computer and then back to the headphones.

The headphones convert from Bluetooth to MP3 mode by pressing the 2 volume keys simultaneously. On my first swim, I absolutely loved hearing music and the laps seemed to tick by with less boredom and tedium. The headphones hug my head and can almost be forgotten, which is a far cry from the “listening to music while swimming” I had over 10 years ago.

Other Applications

I’ve used these headphones a bit in the office as a way to listen to music or be on a call while having a better awareness in my surroundings; e.g. a co-worker wants my attention. The microphone seems to work well for calls, though I prefer noise-cancelling headphones for longer sitting periods of meetings or deep work.

Conclusion

So far, the Shokz OpenSwim Pro is one of the best electronics purchases a multi-sport athlete could buy.