The Apple Watch and Cycling

[FFX_Hinterlands]

If you tend to keep your phone in your pocket, it’s easier to check your progress (and start/end rides) if you use Strava. In theory it should be better for monitoring calls and texts. It monitors your heart rate. If you mount your phone to your bike and/or don’t use tracking software it may offer no benefits.

[LeprosyStudyGroup]

@FFX_Hinterlands 153909 wrote:

If you tend to keep your phone in your pocket, it’s easier to check your progress (and start/end rides) if you use Strava. In theory it should be better for monitoring calls and texts. It monitors your heart rate. If you mount your phone to your bike and/or don’t use tracking software it may offer no benefits.

Does the heart rate function of the apple watch throw that data into strava rides recorded on your phone yet? I’ve been waiting like 3 years for a HR watch that seamlessly does that (like no extra fiddling besides starting and stopping your ride), but kind of gave up paying any attention to it last year cause it seemed like it would never be done well by anybody.

[Emm]

The newer one has some cycling features. If you’re looking for a smartwatch that also does fitness, it’s a good watch from all the reviews. It looks nice, has good features, and they’ve been making some good updates. But if you’re more interested in a fitness watch that also has smartwatch features, check out some other options too like the garmin vivoactive series. They’re cheaper, have alot of smartwatch functionality, and are built to do things like track your ride/run/swim/golfing.

My personal phone is a droid, so the apple watch wasn’t a good choice, but I love my garmin vivoactive hr. It also syncs automatically with strava (including HR info) after each ride if you set it up on garmin connect.

[BobCochran]

@Emm 153915 wrote:

The newer one has some cycling features. If you’re looking for a smartwatch that also does fitness, it’s a good watch from all the reviews. It looks nice, has good features, and they’ve been making some good updates. But if you’re more interested in a fitness watch that also has smartwatch features, check out some other options too like the garmin vivoactive series. They’re cheaper, have alot of smartwatch functionality, and are built to do things like track your ride/run/swim/golfing.

My personal phone is a droid, so the apple watch wasn’t a good choice, but I love my garmin vivoactive hr. It also syncs automatically with strava (including HR info) after each ride if you set it up on garmin connect.

Thank you, Emm! I really appreciate your telling me about the Garmin Vivoactive. I have a question. Can you download the collected data, including the heart rate information, to a a file such as a .csv or .tsv or .json file so that you can import it into a software program of your choice (like Microsoft Excel!) and work with the data alone? I was given a Fitbit several years ago and I was very peeved that I had to use the Fitbit website in order to view the data. And apparently Fitbit owned that data about me — it was their property and they could do what they want with it. (And they had my name and address and other personal details too.) This Garmin Connect website might be the same way. I want the ability to have all my own data in a format that I can use and analyze on my own. I want it exclusively owned by me, not put on a website where it becomes the property of a company.

Anyhow getting a “vivoactive” is very very tempting. And it is lots less expensive than the Apple Watch as you say.

Thanks a ton

Bob

[hozn]

Bob, I don’t have a Vivoactive, but the fact that it syncs to Garmin Connect means it is probably using their .fit format, but regardless of upload format you can export as TCX or GPX from Garmin Connect. Those are well documented (XML) formats that would be easy to ingest. And there will be libraries to do the parsing for you. Or you could use one of many Strava libs to pull the GPX data from Strava automatically.

[AFHokie]

@LeprosyStudyGroup 153914 wrote:

Does the heart rate function of the apple watch throw that data into strava rides recorded on your phone yet? I’ve been waiting like 3 years for a HR watch that seamlessly does that (like no extra fiddling besides starting and stopping your ride), but kind of gave up paying any attention to it last year cause it seemed like it would never be done well by anybody.

I’ve been using an Garmin Fenix 3HR for almost a year and have found it extremely well thought out. So much that I use it to track my commuting miles; for the most part the only time I use my Garmin Edge anymore is for rides where I want the map display & route directions. The battery life is also phenomenal.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930AZ using Tapatalk

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