It’s been a year of me using a smart watch to track activities and workouts. Let’s take a look at the numbers.
I’ve tracked 674 activities on Strava. WOW!
Some are workout snacks, like 10 minute warm ups or stretching. Others are the morning dog walk. Some strength training. Lots of cycling.
I’m definitely more consistent at tracking activities. I’m not sure I’m more active than the previous year but I certainly have more data.
My resting heart rate is slowly trending downward. It was at 65 bpm last year and now 60 bpm.
I’m getting marginally more sleep.
My step count hovers around 9,500.
One thing that I have not done is add workouts or activities to close an exercise or move ring.
If my goal is 60 minutes and my walk was 59 I’m ok with that. I’m not looking to optimize or maximize my steps or exercise. I’m going for more consistency.
My watch has definitely helped me measure that. I’m celebrating by going out for a ride this morning. It’s so nice out!
My beloved has been offering to get me a smart watch for years. I wasn’t that interested in chasing metrics. I was happy with using my phone to count steps and Strava for cycling.
That changed for me as my fiftieth birthday approached last October.
I was thinking a lot about the cardiac monitoring smart watches can do. I know what a benefit that can be. I was thinking a lot about Hal Johnson sharing his story of how his smart watch prompted him to go to the hospital.
So I agreed to get an Apple Watch. After 3 months of wearing it here is my assessment.
Heart stuff good
The monitoring of my heart rate is very helpful. I get lots of data on my resting heart rate, what is going on during workouts and how quickly I recover from workouts.
I was surprised that my resting heart rate, as I go about my day, is 64 bpm. I was delighted that my sleeping heart rate regularly drops into the 40s.
I appreciate that 3 minutes after stopping an activity my heart rate drops 40 bpm. Nice!
Mildly annoyed by rings
I’m not getting the ring thing. I either nail a metric or hilariously undershoot and the watch prompts are silly. It tells me to stand when I’m falling asleep! Yes. I’ve messed with all of the settings but it still occasionally does it.
I stand up a lot so dialing in the blue ring to 14 seems reasonable. I’m trying to get 8 hours of sleep after all.
The active energy red ring set itself to 1,000 calories. That felt a bit ambitious as the data from my phone had me averaging 450 cal.
The watch captures more movement as “active” so that alone saw a near doubling of counted movement. I’m trying to find the sweet spot of a goal that requires mindful movement without making it unattainable. I’ve been stepping it down and have now settled on 700 cal.
Nat’s December bar graph of active energy, workouts and standing. While her monthly average is hitting those goals she is not seeing consistent meeting the metric on a daily basis.
I’m ambivalent about these measures. They are front and centre and I can’t pick what the rings represent.
I’d rather steps than active energy. I’d rather sleep than a stand goal. I don’t care about what the rings measure so I don’t find them motivating.
Important insights
I’m loving having respiratory information as well as heart rate and sleep data.
I’m not as consistent as I thought for walking, workouts or sleeping.
This information is helping me make different choices.
I’m also appreciating that my watch shares my activities on Strava, where many fit friends hang out.
So, yes, I’m late to the smart watch game. Yes, I’m happy with it. I would like more control over what data is centered.
Back in the spring, I joined up with an app to track my cycling efforts for Bike Month. I decided it was sufficiently fun that I kept going even after the count ended. Since June 1st, which is technically late spring, but a convenient place to start, and leaning slightly into fall by counting up to September 26 when I drafted this post, here’s how I have done:
Km ridden on my bike: 1,059
Greenhouse gases averted: 270 kg. A round-trip flight to Ottawa to Berlin creates 2 metric tons of GHG, so I’ll need to cycle at this rate for at least 2 1/2 years in order to offset a single trip to Europe. I am assuming I’ll cycle less in winter and use my car a bit more. This is the calculator I used.
Money saved by riding my bike instead of driving: $643. Honestly, this seems a bit low to me as most estimates have car costs per month in Canada at nearly $1,000, when you include financing, fuel, maintenance and insurance. I’m guessing this amount is just fuel and maintenance.
Critical mass rides to advocate for climate change and safer streets (including Kidical Mass and Fancy Women rides): 5
Organized social bike rides: 11
Km swum: 19.743. This is way lower than past years, but between shoulder issues and general busyness it was all I could manage. Next year!
Activities for a cause: 5 – apple picking for the food bank; helping on various rides; census of transit at various locations around the city for the annual Pedal Poll; swim Angel for Bring on the Bay, which is itself a fundraiser for Easter Seals; 15 km swim fundraiser for the Canadian Cancer Society
Personal cycling goals set and achieved: 4 (18 km each way for a bike swim bike at Britannia Beach, feeding my friend’s cat 20 km away, visiting my parents 25 km away, and visiting my horse 24 km away).
Walks: I didn’t add them up but there were lots, mostly as a way to catch up with a friend, but sometimes for a history tour or to go to the grocery store with my rolly cart.
What did I get out of all this? I discovered that I can do a lot more than I imagined. I have gone from being a steady short-distance commuter to the office to being the person who thinks nothing about using the bike for all kinds of errands – from medical appointments to picking up groceries, going to shows and concerts, to checking on my community garden plots or joining others for a swim, drink or to check new cycling infrastructure. And that I love being social for a good cause.
Kidical Mass Ride, with a range of bikes and people of all ages in a parkMy bike loaded with purchasesMe in the river, wearing a white swim cap and gogglesFriends checking out the new pedestrian/cycling bridge between Ottawa and Gatineau, folks at a social bike ride, and a group of people packing up boxes of freshly harvested apples in an orchard
I joined a couple of challenges as part of Bike Month but deliberately didn’t do too much more than normal. I wanted to see what that would look like.
I normally bike to the office four days a week (just over 2.5 km each way). I bike to swim practice once a week. I visited the dressmaker near the pool a couple of times (she’s making me a dress for my son’s wedding later this summer). I rode to both community gardens, though not every time I went, because sometimes it was easier to combine with a trip to the barn outside of town. I used it for groceries almost every time I needed something, but sometimes that was also combined with a work commute or trip to the barn, so no extra kms to count.
I did join in a few group rides, as I usually do in summer. One night I rode to my friend’s to feed her cats (43 km round trip, my longest distance since high school). Another night I rode across town to meet up with people from my fruit harvesting organization. Despite best efforts, I did not ride the bike shares in Toronto while visiting during Pride weekend, but I did spot one of these awesome seat covers that BikeShare Toronto had made.
Pink bicycle seat cover with the words “Thanks for Being Bike Curious” in large letters, with #RideTOPride in small letters. There is also a circle with rainbow colours and the words Bike Share Toronto on the edge, and a small white bicycle in the centre.
Strava tells me that I completed over 215 kms. The last time I checked, I was the top contributor to my team’s Let’s Bike Ottawa challenge, after biking 15 days before going on holidays until the end of the month.
Those aren’t huge numbers, but they do represent an estimated 55 kg of greenhouse gases averted and $132 saved compared to running a car (payments and insurance included, not just gas).
This month I was reminded that my city is more compact than I imagine from inside my car, but also bigger and more interesting. I saw bats and fireflies, waved to, smiled at, and chatted with random strangers, figured out a decent crosstown route and a way to get all the way to the south end of town almost entirely on the trail system.
I also improved my #CarryShitOlympics skills, which amused my whole team at the staff picnic.
Me in an orange shirt and blue bike helmet, holding my loaded bike in a park. I have a table, folding chair and croquet set strapped to the back. The panniers have a tablecloth, framed certificates, chips, salsa, serving bowls, a cake, knife, cutlery, plates and napkins. My front basket has a boules game and a vase full of flowers.
How did you spend Bike Month? Drop a comment about any new things you tried and and what was particularly fun.
I have picked a word for the year – spaciousness – but I hadn’t really settled on a fitness goal until this weekend when I found a new category of information in my Fitbit.
In my average week, I’m moving a fair bit. I take the dog for a walk or two each day, I usually have two TKD classes in a week, I do a bit of yoga and some stretches and a bit of strength training.
Here’s Khalee supervising while I do yoga. She has such a hard job! I am really a lot of trouble. Image description: Khalee’s head, shoulders and front pays can be seen as she lies on the crumpled top sheet and blankets from my bed. She is facing the camera and her chin is resting on the blankets where they were folded back from when I got up. Her eyes are half-closed and she look looks restful but observant.
Lately though, I have come to realize that I am not really moving the metaphorical needle on my fitness level. I’m maintaining what I have but my efforts are not particularly focused and I’m not feeling any sort of expansion in my capacity.
Part of this is due to my issues with my toes/heel/calf/knee, of course, and luckily that situation is improving steadily. And, up until now, I have been juggling about three things more than I had capacity for at any given time – I could manage to hold most things in the air most of the time but that was it.*
However, some combination of ADHD and personality also factors into this. I never really know when and how to push myself, it’s tricky for me to judge my capacity and energy levels at any given time, and I am never sure if and what I should measure.
I’ve been keeping an eye on my resting heart rate over time but since I don’t wear my Fitbit when I sleep, apparently that’s not a very accurate measurement.
And I check off the box for daily movement but my effort levels vary from day to day. I’m not criticizing myself for that but it does mean that I am maintaining rather than expanding my capacity.
However, this weekend, I accidentally nudged a different part of my Fitbit screen and discovered that I can get more information about my cardio fitness above and beyond just my heart rate.
This puts my numbers in context. I LOVE context!
Fair to average isn’t bad but I’m sure with a little more focused effort, I could get to good and maybe even beyond.
So, in a move that is probably startlingly obvious to anyone who doesn’t live in a ADHD time/pattern soup, I looked up how long it takes to improve cardio fitness and what kinds of exercises will help me see a little progress ASAP. (I know that you can’t rush results but I also know what my brain needs.)
So, now I know that I need to make some of my workouts HIIT workouts and, in about two months, I should see myself inching toward that next blue bar.
In the meantime, I going to try not to check this screen every day hoping for a magical shift. I’ll post about it once a month though, just to keep myself on track.
Image description: A screen capture from my Fitbit app that indicates my cardio fitness on a multicoloured bar with numbers ranging from 24.6 to 39.5. My fitness level is indicated at Fair to Average 27-31 and is in a blue segment of the bar. Text at the top of the image reads: Heart Rate. Cardio Fitness. Your estimate is between Fair and Average for women your age.
PS – I undoubtedly knew some or all of this before. And I may have put some pieces together before. If you had asked me, I probably could have told you that improving cardio fitness is a good idea and that things like HIIT would help. However, when I want to take things on for myself, I always need to have proper context in order to hold on to or apply the information I have. For some reason this chart gave me the right container for the information and let me make a plan. The new level of ADHD meds I started in early December are probably helping this whole process, too.
*Yes, I know that is not an idea situation to be in but I knew it would be relatively short-lived and the effort to juggle was far less than the effort to adjust all my other routines so I just got help where and when I could, took breaks whenever possible, and just juggled the heck out things the rest of the time. And, finally, as of mid-December, a few things finished up and I was back within my capacity and mostly in charge of my schedule. YAY!
Almost two years ago, I joined in the 220 workouts in 2020 challenge that fellow bloggers were doing on Facebook. I liked it because I could set my own rules for what counted as a workout. But it was also a real challenge because I had decided that my usual commute to the office didn’t count, and I was a bit of a weekend warrior except for that daily bike ride or walk.
Because of the COVID lockdowns, even that weekday commute was gone, while my dance studio, the swimming pool, and the stable where I board my horse were all closed. For several months, I had to improvise.
I started to go for walks and ride my bicycle to do errands (they had to be longer than my usual work commute to count). I found that I could sometimes sneak in a quick swim at the nearby pond at lunchtime. I discovered Yoga with Adriene and other Facebook Live or Zoom classes.
By the end of 2020, I had developed enough of a routine that I achieved those 220 workouts. A big part of that was checking in daily to see what everyone else was doing. I liked seeing a little bit of the lives of a diverse group of women – their dogs, watching them take on weightlifting or gymnastics challenges I would never dream of, sympathizing on the days when getting out of the house for a stupid little walk was a big deal.
Grumpy looking bald eagle stomping through the water, on his stupid little walk for his stupid mental and physical health.
In June of this year, Tracy said she was done with counting. Not me. I am a list maker and a tracker of many things. That daily accountability check has encouraged me to take advantage of yoga sessions a colleague offers twice a week, to schedule walks with friends, and to try new activities so that I move almost every day.
Now, after almost two years, the habit has become sufficiently ingrained that I get twitchy if I am inactive for too long. Unlike Tracy, I am not confident I could keep it up without some sort of tracking. If that fitness group were to disappear, I would keep on tracking, even if it is just a list in my phone.
This week, I celebrated completing 400 workouts. They weren’t all great workouts and I don’t think I look more fit. It feels good to have achieved that number. I am stronger, both physically and in my mental ability to keep doing things regularly. My sister says my swimming selfies are boring because I have so many and they are all basically the same. That’s a sign of a successful routine.
Me in a blue swim cap and goggles, with a pond and trees in the background.
Recommended Soundtrack: I wanna be your dog by The Stooges
I’m not great on making a training plan and sticking with it. When it comes to activity I’m more a go-along with whatever folks are up for. Yoga? Sure! Cycling? Yup! Walk? Uh-huh!
So when my beloved decided he wanted to up our step count when walking our dog, Lucy, I agreed. I offered that we could add 1 block to all our walks, short coffee break and our typical 30 minute morning, lunch & evening walks.
It totally worked. In August my average step count jumped from under 7,200 to 11,500. Partly this is because as Lucy gets older she can go on longer walks. The other part is my beloved’s joy in counting and metrics. He really loves hitting goals.
One night, after dinner and a glass of wine, he asked if we could go for another walk. He hadn’t hit 10,000 steps. I pointed out that 10,000 was an arbitrary goal. He laughed and shouted “Join me in meetng this arbitrary goal! Achievement is as meaningless as the goal BUT IT IS ALL WE HAVE!”
Of course he was being overly dramatic. Many times our common goals are based on best guesses and gut feels. I’m not much for tracking metrics or goals so I’ve happily handed over all of that to my partner. He’s a greyhound who needs a rabbit to chase.
The other being I’ve outsourced my motivation to is our resident gremlin, Lucy. She, like Gollum, both loves and hates our walks. She needs the movement but would rather do high intensity frisbee intervals than walk. But she’d rather walk than lay about.
Lucy, the wonder dog, sits attentively watching the photographer who may gift her with walksies or treats.
I find I don’t have the cognitive or emotional depth for self discipline but I can say “yes” to the asks for walks. Like the dog, I’m just along for the ride these days and I am 100% ok with surrendering to the process.
Orange juice, veggie fresh rolls with broccoli slaw and carrot sticks
Score: 3/10
Day 7: Monday
Edamame, orange, carrot sticks, red peppers, tomatoes, kale, green onions
Score: 7/10
Lessons learned:
The first day of anything new thing is great. So much motivation!
Also, I don’t do that badly on my weekdays without much effort. Thanks GoodFood. I do the vegetarian prefab meal kits three nights a week and they’re loaded with vegetables.
But weekends will take work! The main take away is that that’s where I need to put some effort in if I want to get enough fruits and vegetables.
Do you track fruits and vegetables? Do you get ten servings a day?
I’ve been moving away from tracking steps since how much I walk is no longer completely in my control. Some days it hurts and even with my knee brace and it’s best if I don’t walk that far on those days. I don’t external prodding to walk when I shouldn’t be.
So I gave away my Garmin watch and have started using Google Fit instead.
One of my favorite things is that it tracks active, moving minutes. Yes, steps are there but they’re not the main measure. On a day like the one below I do pretty well with biking to work and my swimming lessons after work. Add some walking around campus, and I’ve more than met my daily movement goal.
It’s Day 97! And like Tracy (see her blog post on wanting this to end any time now) I’m ready for the workplace team building step counting exercise to be over. It ends on my birthday. Yippee! Happy birthday to me!
Mostly I’m frustrated because my FitBit is broken (see Should Sam buy a new FitBit? What’s your two cents?) and while it counts steps it won’t sync with the app and so I have to manually enter my steps each day. Oh the horror! I know. It’s a ridiculous thing to mind but I found when my FitBit automatically uploaded the data and automatically synced with the Global whatever challenge app, I didn’t have to think about it. Steps were tracked and occasionally I just logged in to add bike miles. For some reason needing to remember each night and see what my steps were felt so much more onerous.
What I liked about the automatic counting was that I could pay attention or not. If it felt motivational, I went with it. If it started to feel oppressive I ignored it for a few days and just did my usual thing. Given that my usual thing is still pretty active that worked okay for me.
After 100 days of counting steps, where did I land? My average is somewhere between 18,000 and 19,000 steps a day thanks to dog companions, bike riding, and not driving very much. Also I learned that living in a large house with four stories makes a difference. I get up to 4,000 without even leaving the house thanks to basement laundry and lots of roaming from room to room looking for things. Here Garmin! Here heart rate monitor strap! Sports bras, come out come out wherever you are!
By comparison the average step count among those taking part at my university is 12,548.
But my team’s average is over 25,000 steps a day. Over-achievers! I’m part of a team with serious triathletes all training for Iron distance events. They easily leave me in the dust with all that running, biking, and swimming. They are the three activities the challenge tracks. I like the challenge of running with the big dogs. Being the one who aspires to keep up suits my personally. I don’t think I’d be happy being the top achiever on one of these teams.
I’m glad the challenge included my six bike rally days. You can see them below. Big big days.
I was less happy with the activities I do that it didn’t count, like paddling in Algonquin.
Even the portages only sort of count. I mean, yes it counts the steps but no special credit is given for the 50 lb canoe on your shoulders! Or the balance it takes to walk with a pack through ankle deep mud.
And strength training doesn’t count either.
Neither did all the carrying of patio stones and wood flooring and hampers of laundry I move about the house.
So while it’s one aspect of fitness I did find it shifted the focus away from other things I really care about.
Sam’s short version summary review of the challenge: I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it a lot more when my FitBit was working and I didn’t have to think about it. And I’ll be glad come my birthday when we’re done.
It’s Day 97! And like Tracy (see her blog post on