How to Turn a Garmin VivoActive Into an Ultimate Water(wo)man Watch

I've tried a lot of fitness wearables in my journey from Couch Potato to Contender. When it comes to wearable fitness tech, I've gone through many different brands ... some at the same time. Realizing I was at risk of becoming a bionic woman, I wanted to stop having both wrists covered in tracking tech and downsize. Not to mention, I would rather have all of my data in ONE PLACE and subscription services were slowly draining my "athlete budget." (Spoiler alert, to skip reading the article and just get the tide face and surf tracking app, scroll to the bottom - it's like a bad recipe blog ;-P )

NEEDS vs WANTS

Life:

In day-to-day life, something I would expect out of something I'm wearing 24/7 would be heart rate... all day... and all night. If you train 2x a day keeping an eye on your resting heart rate to ensure you're not over training or coming down with something - or experiencing something extremely stressful that could be reflected in your heart rate before you're aware of it - is pretty darn important. I would put this up pretty high on my list of NEEDS because I have a history of overtraining. This may not be as big a need for others...

Then, a fitness wearable that helps me keep track of my hydration, menstrual cycle, calories... and all of that other stuff would also be helpful to help me achieve ultimate human optimization :-) but I'll put those under WANTS, along with apps to check the weather, emails, texts, and appointments.

Training:

Training for big events like the Carolina Cup and the