TimePad

Swimmers make extensive use of clocks when training. Such clocks are usually big analog affairs with a red sweep hand counting off the seconds. However, these clocks are typically set off to one side of the pool, making it sometimes hard to know just how fast you're going-- especially if you're not wearing your glasses. The TimePad combines an LCD clock with the touchpads used in swim races to control the timing system. The pad hangs over the edge of the pool, spanning the width of the entire lane and hanging a meter or so into the water. A big-numbers digital readout is built into the pad itself, so that an approaching swimmer can see time ticking away as he/ she approaches the wall.

The clock would have two settings: during races, touching the pad would reset the split time displayed on the clock. On the other hand, during swim practices (in which you have several people sharing a single lane, and a single clock would be useless for tracking splits), you could turn off the touch-sensitive function, and the clock would function as a normal sixty- second time clock, counting from 00 to 59 over and over. Swimmers would have to do the math for themselves, as they do now, but at least they'd have a good idea of when they touched the wall.

It might also have a lap counter for long- distance workouts, so you don't have to dedicate some chunk of your processing power to counting slowly to 40. Very boring, that, and god help you if you lose count.