Kyle Seth Gray

Kyle Seth Gray's blog. Usually writing about tech, personal experience, but now leaning more towards health and fitness.

Choices Made

As a quick brief followup to this post, after a few weeks of cycling and testing different apps, I've found my solution to keeping all of my data but also getting the most out of all of it.

To maintain my Activity Rings, I use the Wahoo ELEMNT App, which syncs from my bike computer. After many many tests, it gets the calories closest to what the Apple Watch did when I was using it daily for cycling. It also pairs directly with my HR monitor.

Then, to get the HR data from my Wahoo TICKR, I have it paired to my Wahoo ELEMNT BOLT, and my iPhone. Because its "dual band", it can pair to a device that uses ANT+ and Bluetooth. So, it pairs to the computer with ANT+, and then to my iPhone directly (which I always have when I'm cycling) over Bluetooth.

Wahoo writes each workout to HealthKit and writes it to Strava. I'm hoping Wahoo also implements the new Workout Route Mapping API that's coming in iOS 11, because I believe that'll also show the actual map in Activity.app.

So there you have it. A quick little run down on how I still maintain my 400+ move streak, get my data into Strava for segments, workouts, and seeing how I'm improving, and how I still get HR data, cycling distance, and active calories all into the health database on my iPhone.

Choices choices choices…

I got a fancy new bike computer yesterday - I want to get more serious about biking, and with the bike computer, I can use Strava to help me with that.

I tested it this morning with Wahoo's app, Strava, and Activity.app. I wanted to see the type of data I got from each, and how they played out overall.

Wahoo Strava Activity.app

For this ride, I had my HR monitor paired simultaneously to my Apple Watch and my bike computer, and my bike computer fed the GPS data to Wahoo which then fed to Strava. Activity obviously has the most data, because it's the built in solution offered by Apple. I don't know if the new HKWorkoutRouteType in iOS 11 would allow apps like Strava or Wahoo to write a map here in Activity, (retroactively would be even better) but it certainly would make third party apps feel more native.

Wahoo's calories seems... a little high. I was impressed that Strava and Activity were within a few calories of each other, and super glad that they were, since I've had issues with them being similar in the past. But I have no idea how Wahoo shot so high when all 3 sources have the exact same speed, and HR data.

Overall, it's interesting to see three different apps use the same data and take it differently. I think in the future, I'm going to have to use Strava's data whenever I'm biking, since it provides a social experience, still updates my Apple Watch rings, and allows third party apps like Gyroscope to pull out map data.

EDIT: Well, for some reason, neither Strava or Wahoo write HR data to Healthkit. Strava doesn't write HR data at all, and Wahoo seems to sporadically log samples...

This also allows me to bike without having to worry about my Apple Watch battery... which at the moment is pretty crap.

365

A year ago I attended WWDC 2016

During that week, I met awesome people, and learned about new features coming in watchOS 3: Namely, activity sharing on the Apple Watch. It was a feature I used heavily on other fitness platforms: keeping up with friends who also had the same fitness device, and competing with them on achievements, exercises, and even just plains steps.

I was just over the year mark on owning my Apple Watch, and while I did fill my rings semi regularly, I wasn't too serious on completing everything.

(I could go over my fun injury again or my addiction to running but lucky for you! I've already written those posts.)

I started to get serious about it, and just basically wanted to beat my previous move goal streak of about 90+ days.

So I did.

By the time the 90 day mark rolled around, I just kept going.

And going.

And here I am now, and I've hit 365 days on my Apple Watch.

365 days of hitting my move goal. Early morning workouts before sitting in a car or bus for hours, a 21 mile bike ride before a plane ride, getting out and doing jumping jacks in the middle of a long car ride. So many better and new habits formed by just closing those darn rings.

The strange motivation I get from gamifying my fitness is obviously just one part of it. I built healthier habits by getting up early, eating right, and making the gym/biking a regular occurence. One of my favorite things was going to a spin class every morning before school and work at the begining of this year.

Overall, as I've said before, I'm amazed at what I've accomplished with my personal health. This post is just an high level summary, and I'll attempt to go into more detail as time goes on and on, but it comes down to a simple thing:

I was a scrawny, sports hating kid who never really liked being active. I thought of gym as a chore, and even found ways to get around it in high school (I took my 'gym' requirement online. Yes. That is a thing).

Now I get up at 5:00 AM every day, and either go to a gym, cycle, or if I have a different schedule, find a way to workout. I've worked out in crappy hotel gyms in Mexico, walked a couple of miles when I had no equipment, and even just ran up and down stairs a few times. If you find the right motivation, you can do things you never thought you'd enjoy. Because I definitely have.