Polar has introduced open water metrics for the Polar V800 multisport watch. Athletes can now use their V800 to measure swim distance, time and pace, stroke rate, heart rate, and calories in open water.
Whereas indoor distance and pace measurements are based on pool length, the new open water measurements are based on GPS data. Users can view the recorded route following their swim in the Polar Flow app and web service.
Following a swim session, the V800 provides swimmers with a summary of their swimming data including distance, pace (average and maximum), stroke rate (average and maximum) and heart rate. Polar Flow offers a more detailed visual representation of a swim session and includes the route on a map, heart rate, pace and stroke rate curves.
The V800 continues to provide indoor swimming features, which include common swimming styles such as freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly and also measures distance, pace, heart rate, stroke rate, calories and a SWOLF score.
(SWOLF is an indirect measure of swim efficiency and adds the time and the number of strokes it takes to swim a pool length. It is meaningful in analyzing individual progress and helping to improve swimming technique.)
The Polar V800 provides smart and accurate monitoring of training sessions, as well as 24/7 activity monitoring. The multi-sport watch provides customizable profiles for multiple sports and seamlessly changes between sports – recording full performance, including transition times.
The Polar V800 offers a host of other features including heart rate while swimming and ‘the most accurate altitude readings with a built-in barometric pressure sensor.’
To access the new open water swim features, users simply need to update their V800 to the software version 1.5 via FlowSync, and add open water swimming to their sport list.
