Smart Watches

Disclaimer

I’ll start this blog with a disclaimer. It is not a review of any of the watches I have owned; it is simply an account of my experience with them and my love hate relationship with them. If you want to read a full review of any sports watch I can strongly recommend this site.

Back in the day I used to wear a Minions watch. I got it as part of a birthday present from my team at work. I’m not a big fan of grown up watches, I have thin wrists and I really like minions, so it made sense. I still have it: I can’t bring myself to throw it away, so it just sits in a little cut glass container on my bedside table collecting dust. It’s neither use nor ornament but there you have it.

In 2019 I started swimming regularly, gradually building up my distance and the further I swam, the more difficult I found it to keep track of the lengths I’d done. This was fine while I was swimming for swimming’s sake but I signed up to do Swim 22 to raise money for Diabetes UK and I suddenly needed something to keep track of the lengths I was doing so I researched swimming watches and for Christmas 2019 I got a Swimovate Poolmate Plus from Greg.

Swimovate Poolmate Plus

It was a bit exciting, this watch, lots of stats and I wouldn’t need to try and keep track of how many lengths I was doing. Unfortunately it turned out it was inaccurate, wildly inaccurate, missing length after length until I didn’t trust it anymore and went back to keeping count myself. Not a good start, plus its name made it sound like something Wallace from Wallace and Gromit had invented. Not a dealbreaker in itself but the inaccuracy made me realise I needed something a bit more reliable.

So I did some more research on Google and had a look at a few watches. I sort of liked the sound of the Garmin Swim 2 but thought it best to find out a little bit more so after a fresh Google search I found this review.

It told me everything I wanted to know about the watch and quite a lot of stuff I didn’t want to know (I’d never intended to do any open water swimming and quite a lot of the review was about just that). It helped me come to a decision that this was the watch for me, so I did another quick Google search and found it for sale on a website for a couple of quid less than on most other sites so I ordered it.

Garmin Swim 2

It arrived in September and I wasn’t going to do any swimming in it since the pools were shut because of Covid, so I had to find something else to do and I used it to log walks. That wasn’t completely straightforward because there are only five activities you can log on a Swim 2: pool and open water swimming, running, cycling and cardio, so I logged them as runs. I got a badge for my first activity too, which was very exciting.

My first activity and my first badge. I actually changed the activity to a walk several months later when I found out it could be done.

The pool reopened in late September so I didn’t have to wait long to use my watch for what it was intended. Looking back at the record of that swim I realise my new watch managed to miss a length of the pool straightaway. I could have been dismayed but I wasn’t. It was only one length and when I’d decided to ditch the Swimovate it had been missing several lengths at a time. Also I got lots of interesting data with the Garmin and an explanation for each bit so I understood what it meant. So I got to see what my training effect was and also got to understand what it all meant.

My training effect and swolf from my first swim and a handy guide to interpreting training effect

I was happy with this watch and I used it when I started Couch to 5k. I also logged yoga practices as cardio workouts and, once I knew how to do it, converted them on the app. But there came a point when I thought I needed a watch that could do a little bit more, so I did another Google search, had a look at another review on DC Rainmaker and decided on the Garmin Vivoactive 3. I got this watch second hand because it was an older model and I wasn’t sure it would be right for me.

Vivoactive 3

I got this in late January 2021. It had lots of extra activities I could log: walking, yoga, floor climbs, even golf and I don’t play that. It had Garmin Pay but I can’t use that with my bank. It didn’t log sleep or keep an eye on my body battery so I swiftly decided I would wear the Swim 2 most of the time and just use the Vivoactive when I wanted to log a run or a yoga practice. The battery drained pretty quickly but it also charged a damn sight faster than the Swim 2 so if it needed a charge before a run I wouldn’t have to wait long.

It was great logging yoga practices as yoga practices instead of logging them as cardio and then converting them. However when I used it to log a strength workout the fun levels went off the scale. It gave me a map of my body showing which muscles I’d worked on and how intensively, which was just too exciting for words. I’m not keen on strength workouts – too many mountain climbers and Russian Twists for my liking but the muscle diagram gave me all the incentive I needed to do them.

Ooh look. Pretty colours.

So the two watches were working well together but there came a time when I wanted to log an activity which wasn’t on either watch – hiking. We had a pretty hiking intensive holiday in 2021 walking sections of the Welsh Coastal Path (most of them on the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path, something I’ve wanted to do in its entirety for a while). I could log walks but not hikes, so I had to go back to converting on the Connect app.

A photo taken on one of our hikes in Wales

Then there was breathwork. I don’t know where I read about breathwork but as soon as I did I wanted it. There was an app on the Connect IQ store for it but it wasn’t compatible with either watch so there was nothing else for it but to get another watch that would do everything my Vivoactive would do and more, so back I went to Professor Google and did some more research. I ended up going for the Venu 2s, designed for smaller wrists. The Swim 2 had been fine but the Vivoactive looked huge on me so I wanted something a little more dainty.

It took several months between deciding the Venu 2S was the watch for me and actually getting it, with things like the cost of living crisis (could I actually afford to eat and have heat, let alone get a new, not entirely necessary watch?) and Christmas getting in the way. However once we got into the New Year I realised I could afford a second hand one, so I ordered one.

Garmin Venu 2S

It was an instant success. The display is lovely, bright and really clear (essential for me with my bad eyesight); it’s smaller than the Vivoactive and looks really nice on my wrist. I was able to add breathwork and hiking into the activities, which was fabulous, but there are lots of other features I wasn’t expecting.

It can measure my Pulse Ox, very exciting and tells me how well I’ve slept, giving me a score out of one hundred. I can do a health snapshot, although I can’t really say I fully understand the readings. It also has preloaded workouts. I haven’t tried most of them yet but I have had a go at one of the yoga ones. I was very impressed with the little diagrams on the watch showing how to do the different poses.

How to do Downward Facing Dog according to my watch

It’s far more polite than the Swim 2 and Vivoactive. It doesn’t scream “Move!” at me if I’ve been inactive for a while, instead it suggests I might like to get up, have a stretch and move around. When I achieve a steps or floors target I get a proper celebration with fireworks and everything and then it tells me how long the streak has lasted. There are a couple of features it doesn’t have, including the ability to log an open water swim (did I mention I have no intention of swimming in our sewage infested waters and catching cholera?), it doesn’t have training effect, which isn’t that important because I only had that for swimming and I’m not a serious swimmer. Much more important is I’ve used it in the swimming pool and it hasn’t missed a length yet (that’s something my Swim 2 couldn’t boast) and it misses far fewer floors (flights of stairs) than the Vivoactive.

So, all in all I’m very happy with my latest Garmin. So much so that I’ve already sold the Vivoactive and the Swim 2 will follow soon. I suppose there may come a day when I want to know what my training status is or see my training effect or have some other activity to log that isn’t on the current watch and then I’ll go back to DC Rainmaker to see what the next watch I find can do.

Running Ups and Downs

I suppose we all have good days and bad days, good weeks and bad weeks and sometimes good months and bad months. I’ve had them all.

I started running in October 2020 and, apart from a week off in December, I ran regularly for five months. After completing Couch to 5k I worked on gradually building up my distance, kilometre by kilometre and trying to get my pace quicker.

I managed to knock about 5 minutes off my 5k time in those six months but I wanted to get it faster and be able to run it in less than thirty minutes. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to do it but it still seemed like it would be good to go for it. I also built my distance up to 10k and then, seduced by a Garmin badge, I ran 15k.

The badge that seduced me into running 15k

Those five months were very enjoyable but at the end of March, disaster struck. I had just finished a 10k run and I’d got a pb: 1:09:26. I was ecstatic but, as I turned to put my key in the front door, I got a sharp pain in my knee and, instead of going away like I hoped it would, it got worse.

I was horrified: it hurt climbing the stairs and coming back down them. It hurt every time I had to bend my knee, which was a lot more often than I had ever realised. I knew there was no way I should run with it but I really didn’t know what to do. My first thought was to speak to my sister who was an osteopath and she advised me to put ice on it and rest it. She also suggested some gentle exercises for it.

A week or so later I saw my osteopath and after examining it, he declared I had injured my lateral collateral ligament and I shouldn’t even think about running until it had been completely pain free for a week. He gave me exercises to do at home and also said to see if I could ride a bike pain free because, if I could, that would also help.

I was very sensible and did everything he suggested. Bike riding was okay so I went out on my bike more. I also got ankle weights and started using them to strengthen my quads. I bought some magnesium spray and used it liberally and I invested in a compression sleeve for when I would start running again.

I was “on the bench” for just over 5 weeks. Of course I was impatient to run again but I was also terrified that if I did I’d make the injury worse and possibly scupper my chances of ever running again. So I didn’t run. About four weeks into this hiatus my knee stopped hurting altogether. I carefully counted the days until I reached seven and still no pain, so it was time to start running again.

I decided to do Couch to 5k again but this time I used the Zombies, Run version. If you like imagining you’re being chased by zombies while you run then this is the app for you. This particular version started me off very gradually with very short bursts of running. So short, in fact, I distinctly remember thinking “is that it?” after the first one.

Obviously not photoshopped at all

It lasted eight weeks and my final run of Week 8 was the 5k run. I went out and gave it all I had. I obviously had more than I thought because I got three pbs that day and knocked 2 minutes off my 5k time all the way down to 30:45. The knee hadn’t so much as twinged. I realised at that point that I was capable of running 5k in less than 30 minutes.

A few days later I did.

How I Became A Runner

I suppose I should start by saying I never wanted to be a runner. When I was very little I wasn’t particularly averse to running about, I mean that’s what little kids do, but as I got older the whole running thing lost its appeal and I was happier building with Lego or sitting and reading or doing anything else that didn’t require a lot of effort.

Then there was primary school P.E. I was rubbish at rounders (the whole hand eye coordination thing just didn’t click) and I don’t remember winning any races on sports day. I could get by playing netball but I was tall so I had an unfair advantage over my more average height contemporaries.

This continued during my secondary education but now I was becoming extremely competitive. I was quietly competitive about everything. I wanted to be top in every class, the best piano player, the sweetest singer and, of course, the fastest runner, best at hockey and best in the pool. I wasn’t. I wasn’t even close and when I realised just how awful I was at it I just gave up. I hated all sports and bunked off games to have a fag and a cup of tea at every opportunity. So, not an auspicious start.

Fifteen year old sports hating me

Well, I can now fast forward a few decades: to October 2020 to be precise. Pretty much up to that point I’d been quite proud of the fact that I wouldn’t even run for a bus. I had flirted with swimming and cycling and become reasonably proficient at both but this was to be a complete departure from what had gone before.

I’d been working from home for six months and found that I had quite a lot of spare time first thing in the morning. However, I was spending it endlessly scrolling on Facebook and thought there must be a better use for this extra time. I knew a couple of people who’d done Couch to 5k and suddenly I had this bright idea of giving it a try myself.

I didn’t have anything suitable to wear for running, not even a pair of trainers, so I started looking online to try to find something that could be worn as casual footwear if the running didn’t work out. I eventually decided on a pair and ordered them. I didn’t buy any other running clothes. I wasn’t confident enough that this would work out.

The trainers arrived in October and on the twelfth of that month I went out just after six with my brand new trainers, yoga pants, a yoga top, a zip up fleece, a waterproof coat, a hat and gloves and started C25K. I was running round the block (just under one kilometre) and after one circuit I realised I was overdressed. A couple of circuits later, I left the hat and gloves outside my front door and I’d completely unzipped the waterproof. I was boiling when I finished it but I’d discovered that I could run for a minute eight times with walking breaks in between. It was a revelation.

I kept up with it religiously three times a week and “graduated” in December after three 30 minute runs. I still hadn’t run 5k but there was plenty of time for that (it would take me about 37 minutes when I eventually got round to doing it.) I gave myself a week off as a reward and went to buy some proper running clothes because I realised I’d well and truly caught the bug. And that is how I became a runner.