Nat’s 2 year Strava streak – FIT IS A FEMINIST ISSUE

My watch beeped with a ba-bing! My walk with Lucy had just posted to Strava and the notification read “You reached a 2 year streak!”

I guess that means two years of having a smart watch. My love of my watch’s data gathering and analytics ebbs and flows.

I value the heart rate monitoring. I’m annoyed by the calculated secondary measures as well as the word soup “analysis” both Strava and Apple Health provide.

I do appreciate the effortless logging of steps, breathing rates, hours of sleep – as well as the swimming, cycling and strength training tracking.

Since all of that requires no additional effort from me, I have reliable data and am able to analyze my own trends, thank you very much.

Ignore the sleep analysis

Aside from telling me how long I slept, and even that is suspect, I want to find a way to turn off the sleep narrative.

I know what time I went to bed, that I fell asleep quickly, or not, if I was awake for long periods and when I got up.

I absolutely despise the chastising about what time I went to bed. Worse, the tone about my “awake time”, as though it is something I can directly control is annoying.

I wake up at night, every night. Hot flashes, sleep apnea and toilet breaks. It’s my normal. I’m looking for variations from that norm, not a measure against a made up goal of not waking up.

There are reports of people going to their doctor with their smart watch sleep analysis because they think something is wrong.

There is no magic REM, deep sleep or core number to hit. Plus these are calculated and derived from other metrics. Having been to a couple of sleep clinics, I can tell you that the number of sensors required to truly analyze your sleep cycles is staggering.

Aggregate numbers are impressive!

1,225 activities in 2 years means I’m recording, on average, one or two activities a day. This is the active lifestyle I’m looking for.

While I strive for 2 to 3 activities a day, there are some with none and that is ok. My goal is over my lifetime, not 1 day or even a week.

In early June I drove down to New Brunswick and back. A solid 5 days of not doing much other than driving or resting and I’m ok with that.

Celebrate!

So here’s to 2 years of reliable metrics. Yay!!! It’s important to take a moment when you accomplish something.

Related

Published by natalieh (she/her)

Fat, feminist, 50 yr old mother of 2 adults who loves her high energy life partner of over 30 years. I love moving my body and walk wherever I can. I sometimes ride my road bike, do yoga, lift weights and other shenanigans.
View all posts by natalieh (she/her)