Watch Mode - draft 1

AutoCoach's smart stop watch, WATCH MODE

All sports are about games of space, time and relationships. Time is one of the four biggest concepts of sport. Time matters. In swimming and racing, time matters greatly. At the Olympic Games, the finalists race for podium positions. That's when the-best-of-the best step upon the starting blocks and race to determine who gets what color of medal -- or else – no medal at all. Getting fourth place in the Olympic Finals is known as “first loser.” In the Olympics, touching the finish wall first, before the opponents, is paramount. Meanwhile, in the other 99.999% of the races among serious swimmers from around the world, the relationship among the finish order as to who captures first, second and third, takes a minor position. Nearly always, time matters most of all. We strive for days when all the participants in a swim event all improve upon their lifetime-best times. Personal records and improvements in race times provide prime motivation factors for swimmers. What is your time is an often asked question for two acquaintances who come to discover a mutual background in competitive swimming. Stopwatches record time and the AutoCoach Smart Watch has a set of enhancements to help coaches, swimmers and others get better grips on the specifics of time. Stop watches have been the universal tool for swim coaches. One of the first keys to mastering the AutoCoach stopwatch is the control of the buttons. It takes a bit of practice to get used to the different touches and presses of the buttons, especially the two big buttons at the top, one of the right and the other on the left. The quick press of a button, more like a hard tap, causes a different result in some situations as contrasted with a long press of the same button. The LONG PUSH happens when the button is depressed and kept down for an extended moment. The quick press is just down and up again without being held down. Tip: In the excitement of a race, especially in a relay, the finger needs to remember to activate the proper pushing motion. Quick taps or long push – be aware and be careful. I tend to get excited when cheering for a relay team and had blown many relay splits by crashing my finger into the button and keeping it pressed, psyched, overly excited, feeling the relay exchange with the finger on the watch. Woops. Taking a split time for the watch so as to keep the watch running for future splits and the the eventual final time – make a quick-push tap on the button. The LONG PUSH as the first swimmer in a relay hits the wall stops the watch and makes the following splits impossible. The watch mode with the AutoCoach stop watch has some drastically different personalities depending upon the settings or preferences under the hood. This calls for a visit to the SETUP mode so the brains of the watch can be flipped to your desire. After entering the SETUP Mode, the word, “Setup” appears on the lower left corner of the display window. The line that says “Rate Count” is the value to focus upon. The line can read one of the following:

• Rate Count 0
• Rate Count 1
• Rate Count 2
• Rate Count 3

That's it. No rate count value greater than 3. To adjust the various values and settings of this line in the SETUP mode, twist the top right button to the left or to the righ. Twisting gives a slight chirping sound. Play close scrutiny to that number and the direction of the twisting as changes are hard to notice among seven lines of information and only one character changes its value – or not. Every twist makes a sound, but every sound may not make a change to the screen as the value may already be at the end of its line. Turning the dial on the top right button past 3 does nothing. So, if the watch's screen reads, “Rate Count 3” and one twists the dial even higher, the watch is still always going to read, “Rate Count 3.” Chirp, chirp, chirp for twist, twist, twist but no changes to the display as it is always “Rate Count 3.” Tip: Turn the button in the other direction. Then the witness that the display changes, “Rate Count 2”, and then of course, “Rate Count 1” and “Rate Count 0.” Again, at the end of the line, turning the button in the same direction when at “Rate Count 0” makes no changes to the display and only results in a chirp. There are only 4 options and no more. Most of the time, I love to operate the watch with the setting at “Rate Count 0.” That setting, with Rate Count ZERO, means, in my mind, I don't care at all about rate count. Rate counts are meaningless, worth nothing. The watch won't give me any stroke rate counts. Rather, the watch then awakens the right side buttons to do other tasks. Rate Count 0 shuts down the capacity for timing of rate counts and turn on the capacity to have two stopwatches operating within the same watch, but on different buttons. With Rate Count 0, the there becomes a left-side stop watch and a right-side stop watch. This allows for the coach to time two athletes or two relays in the same heat at the same time.

With Rate Count 0 established in the SETUP mode, let's exit the SETUP and go to use the watch.

Before exiting, lock down the settings. Push the RIGHT BUTTON and hear the happy sound, “Store.” A hint appears on the screen under the right button that reads, “Save” with an arrow pointing to the button. Nice tip. SAVE the setting. Store the options into the watch's memory. Then, it is okay to depart the SETUP mode and begin to time. To depart the SETUP mode, depress the grey side button on the LEFT and twist the LEFT top button and scroll around to the various mode options. Hold the watch in the left hand and use your left thumb to depress the side button on the left and HOLD IT DOWN. Then reach with the right hand behind the watch so that the finger and thumb of the right hand holds the left top button and can twist it. Turning the LEFT BUTTON while depressing the LEFT SIDE BUTTON switches MODES. There are about 10 different modes. They flash one after another in an endless cycle. No chirps. No end of the line. When you've past the last option, they repeat themselves. If you pass beyond the mode you were attempting to reach, reverse the twist and it reverses the direction to the most recent options displayed. Memory, Watch, Speed, Slipts, BeepTest AIS, PTest, Pace, Interval, Setup, L 1, Race, Memory, etc. The order of the modes is not important. Some modes have come and gone on the watch depending upon the software updates, versions and such. One of my favorite modes, SCORE, vanished from the watch after an update. Oh, well. The various MODES are confusing at first. It takes some time to explore and understand what each mode does and how to use it in everyday settings. And, as is the case with the “Rate Count 0” value in the Setup area, the personality of the WATCH mode changes. Slogging forward, with “Rate Count 0” in Setup, and landing in the MODE called WATCH, let's time get to timing and using the stop watch. Well, to be clear, we're not using just ONE stop watch, we're using two stop watches in one. Note the set of two lights at the top of the stop watch. One light is next to the right button and the other light is next to the left button. When the watch is timing, the light blinks. When the watch is at idle, the lights are off. With two watches, both lights could be off, both could be blinking, or only the right could be blinking or just the left could be blinking. Options are: Off or On and Left and Right.

Visible signs	Left watch	Right watch
No blinking lights	off	off
Blinking light on left	ON – Timing – Running	off
Blinking light on right	Off	ON – Timing - Running
Both lights are blinking	ON – Timing – Running	ON – Timing – Running

Let's begin with a reset of the watch and the zapping of all the times from the screen. Stop the watch by LONG-PRESS. Then do a LONG PRESS on the LEFT BUTTON. Long press on left button when all watches are stopped is a reset to off and empty display of times. At the start of the race, LONG PRESS on the RIGHT TOP button. That long press begins BOTH the left and right time functions. Both lights will begin to blink as a signal that both sides are timing. TIP: A short tap press on the right button is not the same as a LONG PRESS on the right button. The tap press only starts the right side, not both. Holding the PRESS longer tells the watch to being both the LEFT and RIGHT side. TIP: When timing two swimmers in the same race, one needs to devote one button to each swimmer. This gets to be a bit of a puzzle when the swimmers go back and forth in the pool. I generally try to POINT the watch at the starting blocks then have the swimmer on the left be the left button and the swimmer on the right be the right button. It is key to always hold the watch in the same fashion. A mental picture at this point is necessary to help with button pushing consistency and watch execution as it is easy to fumble and push the wrong button and screw up the splits. Case in point: Swimmers travel East and West up the lanes and back. Need to talk about REACTION TIME settings. Need to talk about COURSE of pool settings too. 25 Y (etc.) Might want to do both of those discussions AFTER understanding the watch functions and use. NEXT, need to talk about Stroke Rate 1 behaviors. Also need to talk about Stroke Rate 1 vs. Stroke Rate 2 vs. Stroke Rate 3.

I favor the use of Stroke Rate 1, not 2 or 3.

ended.... This might take another 3 hours to ramble away. I have some other things to do. Not sure if you find this of value? What I'm doing now is making a script as to how I might teach the use of the watch for a seminar on AutoCoach. But, I'd really not want to script it first. I'd rather do the OUTLINE. Then script.