Category: Revelation

Heart Rate shouldn’t be this hard

In the 13-odd years I’ve been racing kayaks, I’ve come to rely on having my speed and heart rate displayed in front of me to help with pacing, both during training and racing. And usually that’s been done with the combination of some model of Garmin Forerunner GPS “watch” and a heart rate chest strap – starting with a Forerunner 301 (which nobody except Garmin would call a watch) and the strap that came with it, going through several generations of Forerunner and occasionally replacing the strap because Garmin uses these tiny little screws to hold in the battery cover and they strip easy. I’ve got 2 or 3 of them in my drawer with stripped screws. A few years ago I replaced my Garmin chest strap with a Wahoo TICKR and it worked great. Not only does it have a battery compartment that you can open with a quarter (or the corner of your CrashTag) but it also broadcast on both ANT+ for your watch and Bluetooth so you could display it on your phone (with the help of the Wahoo Fitness app).

Fast forward at bit. After a couple of years of the TICKR working great, I lost it. No idea what happened to it, it’s not in any of the places I’d normally put my strap between workouts, or any of the places where Vicki would throw it on “cleaning lady day” to get it out of the way, nor even any of the 3 gym bags or rolly bags that I normally use for travel. It just vanished. I bought a new one, which has been redesigned and is now in “stealth black” instead of blue and white. And it just never worked right – it displayed ridiculously high numbers all the time, both on my watch and on my phone. I returned it for a new one, and the same problem. After a lot of trouble shooting, I got Vicki to put it on and it reads right on her, so I know it’s not the strap. But meanwhile I’ve got no reliable heart rate.

So I bought a Garmin HRM:Dual, which is their newest heart rate strap – the “Dual” meaning that they too now broadcast on Bluetooth as well as ANT+. It worked pretty well for about a year on ANT+, but it’s *never* worked right on Bluetooth, at least not on either Wahoo Fitness or Kinomap. Ok, Wahoo Fitness might just be that the Wahoo app doesn’t work right with Garmin straps, and Kinomap is… quirky. Also, in the meantime I’ve also got a Garmin Fenix 6X Sapphire watch – it does everything the newest Forerunners do, and then some. And it reads me heart rate 24×7 on my wrist. Which is great, except for kayaking I really need to put a watch on the footstrap of my boat so I can see it. I can hardly see something on my wrist when it’s flashing past my eyes 40 times a minute.

A few weeks ago my HRM:Dual started giving garbage results towards the beginning and end of workouts. The beginning I can understand, sometimes it takes time to work up enough sweat that it makes good contact, even if you remember to spit on the pads before you start. I have some electrode gel I bought a few years ago and that helped a bit, but I was still getting garbage numbers part way through a workout. I replaced the battery, and it didn’t help.

And that’s when I started a game I call “Permutations and combinations”. Using my Fenix on my wrist and my old Forerunner 920XT on my desk or on my boat’s footstrap, I started experimenting. I tried the TICKR, still garbage (shows a number, but the number keeps rising up to around 122 while my Fenix and manual counts say I’m at 44), HRM:Dual, still garbage (says it’s connected, doesn’t show numbers). Replaced both batteries, both still garbage. Used electrode gel, both still garbage. Tried the HRM:Dual with the strap from one of the older Garmin heart rate monitors – hmmm, seeing some signs of life, but still not reliable numbers. Eventually I tried shaving the strip of hair on my chest under where the strap goes. And then I got good numbers on my HRM:Dual. At least on ANT+, still nothing on Bluetooth. But I did a workout yesterday with the HRM:Dual paired with the 920XT on my footstrap, and the Fenix 6 on my wrist, and both numbers stayed pretty amazingly in sync.

Heart rate comparison
(Purple line is HRM:Dual on Forerunner 920XT, Blue line is Fenix 6X on wrist)

And I guess that’s where I’ll leave it – I’ll pair the HRM:Dual with my Fenix 6 again, and use the Fenix on my footstrap. And try to remember to shave that strip on my chest when I shave my head.

New Camera

I decided to make a jump and bought a used Garmin VIRB 360 camera. I was going back and forth about this camera, because it’s several years old and there’s been no hint that Garmin is considering updating it or even improving the support (there are posts in the forums complaining about bugs in Garmin VIRB Edit that have been unfixed since 2016).

But there are two extremely important factors that led me to buying it:

  • They advertised that it won’t overheat even with an hour’s continuous recording. Considering how many times I’ve lost a GoPro early in a race due to overheating, that’s a good thing to see an action camera care about. GoPro seems to feel that action cameras are meant to record short clips like a downhill ski run or a sky dive, not an hour or more of continuous action.
  • They make a “powered tripod mount” that allows you to connect your camera to an external USB battery in a water resistant manner.

There’s another cool feature I didn’t know about until I got it home – when it’s paired to my Fenix fitness watch, it will start recording when I hit start on an activity on the Fenix automatically. Also I get a warning on my watch when its battery is getting low. If I get the external battery working, I might prefer not to wait until I hit start to start recording, but it seems like this is a good way to record as much of a race as I can.

I have done a few shoots with it, and so far it seems to give just about exactly an hour of video even with GPS turned on and external sensors and devices paired to it. The video is pretty good quality, and I like the idea of a 360 degree video for seeing all the action in a race.

You should be able to move the viewport around by clicking and dragging or touching and dragging, or even moving your device around if you’re on mobile.

I’m still not sure if I’d rather put up 360 video on YouTube people and hope people see which direction the cool action is happening, or if I’d like to “direct” it.

Here’s a 360 video where I use the “reorient feature” to point the default view where I think the action is, but the viewer can move the viewpoint around manually, and then when I reorient it might get confusing.

Again, you can move the viewpoint around manually, but if you don’t you can see that I’ve tried to move it myself to track things of interest.

And here’s pretty much the same “reoriented” video, but converted to flat so the viewer can’t mess with the viewpoint.

In this one I still track points of interest, but you can’t drag the viewport around to look at things other than what I want you to look at.

The camera records what Garmin calls “G-Metrix” data – i.e. the speed and distance and heart rate and other data that I love to overlay on my videos. By recording it in the camera instead of taking it from my Fenix watch, it simplifies the process of getting the data on the video, but there are a couple of major problems with it

  1. VIRB Edit lets you plonk a gauge on the screen, but it stays in the same place relative to the view, rather than to the viewport – i.e. when you move the viewpoint around, it scrolls off the screen. I’d rather there was an option to keep it static in the viewport as you move the viewpoint around. And this is still true even if you’re using what they call “Hyperframe” to convert the video to flat. You’d think once you made the video flat you could use gauges the way you do on a normal flat video.
  2. There are a different set of gauge templates for 360 videos than for flat videos, and when you use Hyperframe, they still only show you the 360 templates.
  3. VIRB Edit had terrible editing tools. You’d think the difference between doing “trim right” in VIRB Edit and Final Cut Pro X (FCPX) wouldn’t be huge, but Final Cut Pro has keyboard shortcuts as well as “blade” and “blade all” as well a the trims. When it comes to transitions and titles the differences are night and day – there are 156 transitions in my FCPX (some are 3rd party) and 5 transitions in VIRB Edit, and hundreds of titles in FCPX versus 1 in VIRB Edit. Add to that the fact that VIRB crashes with shocking regularity – like 3 times when trying to do that flattened video before I gave up and did it in Final Cut Pro X.

So yes, I can edit the footage in Final Cut Pro – I’m not sure if I can grab it directly off the SD card or if VIRB Edit has to do something first, but I grabbed a video out of the ~/Movies/Garmin directory and dropped it in to FCPX and it recognized it as a 360 video and I was able to point around and do 360 stuff immediately.

So now I’m trying to figure out what my future video workflow will be. If I’m going to always flatten the video, I might keep doing what I have been doing and making a blue screen video with gauges in VIRB Edit and overlaying that on the flat video in FCPX. But if I’m going to output 360 videos, I could stick the gauges down near my boat, and output the full video with the gauges in VIRB Edit then bring it into FCPX for cutting, adding titles and transitions.

Maybe I need to do both for a while and see what people like.

Flow State

It is hard to explain just what an amazing feeling it is to start paddling away off on a long easy paddle. More than the thrill and challenge of a race or the good feeling of accomplishing a hard workout, just the feeling of strength and power and accomplishment, it is what keeps me going out day after day. It’s a very zen state when your technique is good and the boat is moving effortlessly.

You know, there were a few times in my skiing and orienteering lives where I was in a state where everything was coming together effortlessly and it seemed like I was just a sponge for sensations. I’ve heard it described as “flow state”.

I can think of very specific days when it happened, like an orienteering meet at Hilton Falls where I felt like I barely had to look at my map, I just knew where I was and where I had to go. Frank Farfan was taking pictures at one of the controls and he said I was the only one who ran straight in and straight out of that control without a moments hesitation and the whole race was like that. I believe the picture he took of me ended up in the International Orienteering Federation newsletter.

Another time was on the second day of one of the Canadian Ski Marathons I did. It was a gorgeous day and I remember double poling down a gentle incline and passing a guy who said “Il fait beau, eh?” and that just summed up the entire day for me. Perfect skis, perfect wax, perfect snow, perfect day and a real feeling of being one with everything.

I was watching some YouTube videos the other day from a guy who had a v12 surfski with hatches and bulkheads that he was using for kayak tripping. I’d be damn tempted to go travel the waterways of Algonquin Park again like I did 40 years ago if I had hatches and bulkheads in my V8 Pro. They probably have sleeping pads that don’t hurt by now.

More updates on the Fenix 6X front

Garmin replied to my support ticket to say that they were working on a patch to fix my problem and they’d inform me when it was ready. Then yesterday when I plugged my Fenix into the computer it did install an update, but I wasn’t sure if it was “the one” because they didn’t inform me. I decided to take both the Fenix 6X and the Forerunner 920Xt out on the canal to make another comparison.

My impression while paddling is that I didn’t see any ridiculous speeds this time, but the Fenix was reading a little higher than the 920Xt much of the time. Also, by the middle of the paddle the Fenix had the distance about 20 meters further, and by the time I finished it was nearly 40 meters.

I threw both FIT files into DC Rainmaker’s Analyze tool and found a few things.

GPS track comparisons

The first thing you see is that both tracks go a bit wonky around these bridges (and others not shown here). The purple line is the Fenix, and the blue line is the 920Xt. When I paddle downstream I tend to stick towards the middle of the canal (the upper lines) and when I return I tend to hug the inner shore. I can assure you I didn’t make a sudden jog to the left bank at Monroe Avenue as shown in the upper Fenix track or a sudden jog to the right shore as shown on both tracks. Same with the bridge at Schoen Place – the Fenix track shows me way too far north and the 920Xt track shows me making a sudden jog to the south, neither of which are correct. Overall the 920Xt seems to do a better job of showing my actual track, but the Fenix isn’t terrible.

The speed graph comparisons

Overall, it looks like the Fenix speed has been more aggressively smoothed, or maybe it’s not sampled as often. There’s a weird peak at the 16 minute mark where the 920Xt is showing 10.1 km/hr and the Fenix is showing 12.6, but otherwise they’re close. And not surprisingly, the spike occurs while passing under another bridge, State Street, which is also a steel bridge with big trusses.

Speeds zoomed in a bit

When I zoom in you can see that the 920Xt speed is changing much more frequently than the Fenix. Come to think of it, I remember setting my 920Xt to sample every second – that might be something I need to do for the Fenix as well. You see a similar smoothing effect (or lack of sampling frequency effect) on heart rate even though they’re both paired to the same Wahoo TIKR heart rate strap.

One thing everybody should know about GPS watches is that their altitude information is terrible. And these two watches are terrible but different.

Elevation data comparison

The Fenix is consistently higher elevation that the 920Xt, but with similar shape of ups and downs (on a practically flat canal). Only 3 or 4 meters elevation difference between them most of the time. I can’t find any obvious cause for the weird dip at around the 33 minute mark on the 920Xt as I’m nowhere near any bridges nor am I particularly close to the concrete walls of the “Washing Machine”. But that’s ok, I usually remember to click “Elevation corrections” on Garmin Connect and Strava after it’s uploaded. I think what they do is correct your elevation to what a digital elevation map says your elevation should be at each location point.

At this point I’m just about ready to declare myself ready to use the Fenix for normal paddling. I’ll do a few more head to head tests first, though.

Tentative 2020 Race Schedule

NYPRA still hasn’t just released their list of points races, so I’m guessing a lot on which races are points races and which aren’t.

  • April 9 Round the Mountain
  • June 13-14 Madrid Canoe Regatta
  • June 20 Armond Bassett
  • June 27 Tupper Lake 8 Miler
  • July 11 Electric City Regatta
  • July 12 Barge Chaser (I meant to do this last year but I got sick)
  • July 26 BluMouLA-FuFuRa
  • Aug 15-16 USCA Nationals Newago, MI
  • Sep 26 Long Lake
  • Oct 13 Onondaga Cup (a Tuesday? I think they’ve got it in the calendar wrong)
  • Oct 17 Seneca Monster

I don’t think this is a complete calendar. June and July look pretty busy, but August and September look pretty bare. Maybe I’ll do L2L? Or the 90?