WaterFi

Tia got me a WaterFi iPod Shuffle and waterproof headphones. I had a friend that used a bone conduction set, but apparently those aren’t sold anymore. However this had good reviews, and this was my second choice. It’s good since I’m an iGuy and didn’t have to play the AC4->MP3 conversion game.

I unpacked and charged it today, and then got iTunes installed with Chocolatey. If you haven’t tried Chocolatey, it’s cool and highly recommended. In any case, once that was done, it picked up a bunch of music from my machine, I copied a touch more from the Home Server and then synced up the Jay-Z, Kanye, and Eminem songs. I thought those would be a good set of tunes to workout to.

I haven’t had great luck with earphones over the years, and wasn’t sure this would work. However I picked the largest buds and stuck them in. I worked out first with weights, and it seemed to work well. The cord is short, so I clipped the iPod on my shirt in the back and let it play. No issues and the earphones stayed in.

Next was the pool. I was nervous, but with a two year warranty, either they’d waterproofed it right or they hadn’t. It turned out they had and I was able to get going in the pool easily. I put on goggles and started. Things worked well, and I could hear music, though definitely I needed to up the volume. The pool can be loud, and with lots of kids and splashing, it was hard to hear.

On my first lap, the earphones came out. Grrr.

I wasn’t sure this would work, and I’d forgotten a swim cap (which I’ll bring next time). This time I decided that the normal way of putting in the earphones (cord down), wasn’t working. I flipped them up and inside my goggle strap so they wouldn’t drag on my arm if they came out. I then had the cords up, and pushed them back into my ears, pulling the top of the ear to get them situated.

From there, I upped the volume slightly and set off on sets of 200. I got to 1200yds without an issue, and even managed to forward one track that I didn’t love in the middle of a set when I changed direction.

I still think I’ll try the cap since I was conscious of the phones and worried about them most of the time (especially on turns), but overall, I enjoyed swimming with some music in my ears.