The Nome by Trinsik Sports
What is the “Nome”? The Nome is an LED light strip put at the bottom of the pool to help you hit your workout goals. The contraption works by setting a time and distance interval along with the rest. For example, if your workout is 15x100 yards with a 1:20 goal time and a 20 second interval, you program the workout into the Nome and start. The LED light strips lays at the bottom of the pool and the whole strip will light up and flash three times before your interval starts. During the interval there will be a light running up and down the strip at your exact split pace. The Nome will record your rest, the light flashes there times right before your interval again, then you are off, again and again. I was introduced to the Nome at the Magnolia Masters Pro Swim Camp and over a two week period I swam with it for a couple times.
So why would a swimmer/coach/squad use a Nome and what were my thoughts on it? There are multiple benefits of the Nome and Trinsik Sports does a great job outlining the benefits on their website so I will not go through them all here. I only want to highlight the benefits I feel would be most beneficial to me and my swimming environment. I liked the Nome at once because I felt as if the little pacing light was my swim buddy! I never have a swim buddy to pace off of or share the pain of a workout with so having a little light pace me did take away some mental stress of pacing and calculating my split time and recovery time. For a coach on pool deck, and this is what Tim did to me at the swim camp, they can set the interval goal and rest without the swimmer knowing the time. I enjoy this “unknown” factor and was able to hit some interval times I would have never thought possible if I knew the set interval pace.
I used the prototype Nome and the current model has a lot more enhancements and features than the one I was able to try out. The one I used only had one light, therefore, only had one set pace but the new version has multiple different color lights and pacing times for multiple swimmers in one lane to use. Below is the link to the companies website. I had the pleasure to meeting the founder and if you have any questions do not hesitate to contact them!