Best Fitness Tracker for Triathletes – Garmin Forerunner 735XT
The most popular form of triathlon involves swimming, running and cycling. Training can be intense and careful analysis of an athlete’s workout is critical for success. It is pretty simple to find a high quality fitness tracker for both running and cycling, but swimming is a different story. While, more and more waterproof fitness trackers are on the market, not all are created equal. We took a look at all the major players and came up with the one we think is the best for triathletes, the Garmin Forerunner 735XT.
The Garmin Forerunner 735XT combines an optical heart rate monitor with a wide variety of features, to provide all the stats necessary for serious runners, cyclists and triathletes. A built in accelerometer measures pace and distance, without the need for an uncomfortable HR chest strap. A metronome provides stride-cadence vibration alerts timed with your pre-determined training plan, to push you to meet your goals. The Garmin Forerunner 735XT can be paired with the HRM strap to measure your VO2 max and stride length data. The heart rate monitor can be strapped on snuggly to the wrist for accurate measurements. As it is designed as a multi-sport watch you can switch between activities with a simple push of a button. While triathletes will focus on running, swimming and cycling, the watch will also record information for hikers, cross-country skiiers, paddle enthusiasts and more.
We really like the ability of this waterproof fitness tracker to get effective data for swimmers. It can measure pace of swimming, distance, pool length, stroke count and SWOLF score. The watch can even determine the type of swim stroke (e.g. front crawl, breast stroke). Other swim functions include drill mode and interval/rest timer. When used with the HRM-Swim or HRM-Tri, it can track your heart rate as well. We have yet to find a better smartwatch for competitive swimmers.
Other physiological metrics it measures include lactate threshold, race predictor, recovery advisor, performance indicator and audio prompts. Some features of the Garmin Forerunner 735 XT require the use of the HRM chest strap, which is sold separately. Bluetooth Smart allows for call and text notifications, Live Tracking, workout uploads and GPS navigation. It also has ANT+ capabilities. The watch has some really cool features for advanced training. For instance the Training Effect Score tells you how much your workout is helping to improve your fitness level (or not), and it even tells you how much time you need to rest before your next workout. More general features include stopwatch, calories burned, distance/time alarms, sleep tracker, heart rate target zones and workout history stats.
The Garmin Forerunner 735XT is a sports watch and it looks exactly like that. It is durable and built to last. It is not designed for aesthetics, at least for anything other than the “athletic look.” It is definitely a function before fashion smartwatch. Given, how much it can do and it’s rather rugged appearance it is surprisingly light. It comes in two color options and has a breathable silicone wrist band. The watch can be customized using the Garmin Connect IQ store. There are a lot of fun and unusual features to check out in the store. You can even download workouts created by other Garmin users. The battery life of the Forerunner is an impressive 11 days without the GPS. When using the GPS you still get 14 hours of use. This far exceeds the battery lives of both the Apple Watch and Fitbit trackers.
This watch is definitely a worthy and valuable training tool for competitive triathletes. It provides all the data you need to keep your training on track and to motivate you to push yourself to be your best. For hardcore athletes we think the Garmin Forerunner 735XT is the best fitness tracker on the market!
