Tag: trackers

  • Appalachian Trail Progress Via Garmin And Walk The Distance

    Appalachian Trail Progress Via Garmin And Walk The Distance

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    Recently I started the Appalachian Trail Challenge on Garmin Connect and every sstep I take counts towards the goal. The goal is to walk 3,500km, which is around 4.9 million steps. I have walked 652 km out of 3,500 so I have completed about 18 percent of the challenge. I am almost a fifth done.

    More Than A Year

    According to the pacer app I have taken 4.6 million steps in the last year, 2.6 million in the last six months. My average steps per day is around 15,146. According to this data it will take me just over a year to complete the AT at the current pace. As I look at this data the effort and goal seem futile. It means a year of wearing a Garmin watch, rather than other brands. A year of loyalty.

    Forgotten Apple Watch

    Yesterday for the first time in a while I forgot to wear my apple watch so the first walk of the day was counted by the phone, rather than the watch. The step count wasn’t affected.

    Walk The Distance

    https://www.walkthedistanceapp.com/
    While writing this blog post I decided to look for other ways to track walking distances and I came across Walk The Distance. This application tracks your distance walked and displays it on a map of whichever thru-hike you choose.
    I chose the Pacific Crest trail for a change. I’ve used it for a few minutes. I like that it shows the distance you have travelled on a map, rather than just theoretically. I like this because if I’m reading about someone walking the AT, the PCT, the Camino De Santiago or other walks I usually hear place names, and some are familiar, but I have no idea of where they are in time and space. With this app I do.
    With the Garmin challenge you walk 4.9 million steps and the only moment you see anything is when you complete the challenge. With the Walk the Distance App you see it permanently, if you’re obsessive, or daily if you’re not.
    https://www.walkthedistanceapp.com/about-us

    And Finally

    Taking half a year to walk from Point A to point B is not possible for everyone so by tracking walking progress with apps people are given the opportunity to go on a journey while continuing their daily lives. This gives people the opportunity to experience something new, by proxy.

  • Connected Watches and Psychological Profiles

    Connected Watches and Psychological Profiles

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Connected watches know everything about us. In theory they listen to us 24 hours a day for years in a row. My Apple watch has been on my wrist for over four years, every single day. It has been for swims, runs, rock climbing, via ferrata, office work and more. 

    The watch knows how much I walk, when I get up, when I go to sleep, how well I wash my hands, how exposed I am to noise and much more. It also knows whether I am moving energetically or lazily. It knows if I am walking faster or slower. It also knows how rested or stressed I am, by looking at heart rate variability. 

    Some people will look at the two paragraphs above and think “I don’t want this”. 

    The Suunto, Garmin, Casio and other brands I have used measure walking, sleeping, and more but not in the way that Apple does. Apple theoretically knows a lot more for two key reasons. The first is that the Apple universe includes your laptop, your phone, your watch, your tablet and your keys and other possessions. Apple has access to almost every aspect of our lives. 

    I bring this up, not because of a sense of paranoia, but simply because there is an article about this on the RTS website after some uni students wanted to know more. They asked people hundreds of questions to get a profile. They then tried to correlate that data with watch data to see if the watch could help establish mental health via a watch. They don’t say anything about brand. 

    What makes this report especially interesting is that these are conclusions from fitness trackers, rather than high end smart watches. 

    Some things are obvious. People who go out on a friday night are considered extroverted, people who sleep little and move more regularly are considered nervous and more. This is nothing that we wouldn’t expect to hear. 

    If we look at the bigger picture, at big data, then this could be interesting. By tracking enough people over time it could be determined whether people are becoming happier, sadder, more nervous, less nervous, about to commit suicide and more. There are reports of how connected devices showed signs that someone was beginning to fall sick, with COVID, or other diseases. 

    Steps, sleep and heart rate are just the tip of the iceberg. Most watches collect more than this so they know more.