Well That Sucked

I'm just getting over having had Covid-19. Tested two weeks ago and got the results just after.

The diagnosis coincided with the last of the warm weather and just as the mornings started getting dark so the seasons also haven't promoted wellness.

On the first day I believe that the stress of not knowing along with the start of the illness triggered off a migraine. Normal migraine symptoms of confusion, loss of speech and headache sent me to bed.

The following morning, when I actually got the result, I had woken up aching.

By about three that afternoon I was beaten and had to go back to bed.

That's pretty much how I was for the past two weeks, aching and tired. Popping the odd Ibuprofen, making sure I drank plenty of water.

This of course has meant no leaving the house and no running.

There's lots of people out there being hit much harder by this pandemic than I have been so far but I still feel it's important to take a note now of what happens to me too.

There was that initial feeling of dread when getting the positive test result. The news is full of just figures and information on how to avoid spreading the virus, but nothing much in the way of what to do to look after yourself if you are diagnosed as having it. Should you drink more? Should you wrap up warmer? Should you eat more prunes? With no real guidelines it feels like a lottery as to whether you'll get better and what impact the virus will have. 

Keep On Running

 I've been tracking my steps automatically and saving to Google Sheets since 26th October 2019, almost a year now. My first recorded run with Maia was 2nd November 2019 when we struggled to complete a few laps of the local, small park.

There was a break in our exercises from December 2019 to March 2020 and since March we've been pretty persistent, running more than twice a week most weeks.

Most mornings now we run 5km and gradually we're getting quicker.

This week I had my first running injury. I've had knee pains but don't really count those as I'm still finding my running style. 

I stepped on a branch which I though just bruised my toe but on later examination it seems that the branch stuck a thorn through my running shoe into my toe.

Took this little splinter/thorn out using magnesium sulphate paste and tweezers. All back to normal now.

Keep On Moving

 On the 1st of September I ran 5km at 6:30am and the mist across the river was beautiful. Boats appears out of the mist and then disappeared and the sound of the morning was blanketed. As I was running I didn't have my phone with me to take pictures.

This morning Lance and I walked across Horsell Common. It wasn't quite as cold as it had been yesterday so the mist over the water was much lighter and soon evaporated as the sun rose.

Personal Best Updates For August 2020

 Seems I've not posted personal bests here since April. Not much improvement but then not much effort put into improving these either. I've mainly been working on consistency and distance rather than times.

Times from August 2020

1km - 5:37
1 Mile - 9:35
5km - 32.46

Times from April 2020

1km - 5:52
1 Mile - 9:35
5km - 33:05

I've been running 8 - 10 times a month, typically twice a week. Added a new route across Horsell Common walking and running with Lance. This new course is around 8.5km and is more flat than the 5km local run though I've not set any personal bests on this route yet.

Despite a couple of problems with Garmin and with Virgin Pulse over the last few months I've still been consistently monitoring steps.

I started using the Honor Band 5 when Garmin had their technical issues, this adequately counted steps and monitored sleeping patterns. At the beginning of August I was unable to synchronise my step count between Google Fit and Virgin Pulse, while investigating the cause of this issue I went back to wearing my Virgin Pulse Max Buzz so as to keep the step count on my Virgin Pulse account up to date. The synchronising appears to be working again now but I've stuck with the Max Buzz. Although the Honor Band 5 is a nicer device it really doesn't give much in the way of shared information with other systems meaning you have to read the data in the format provided by the Huawei Fit app. I've not gone back to the Garmin Vivofit as I'm now cautious about their entire system after their infrastructure was offline due to an apparent cyber attack.

I feel the next big test of my exercise regime will be whether I keep running as rain becomes more frequent.

Fitness Tracker Change

Having not been able to sync my Garmin Vivofit for a couple of days I finally did a search in the news and it appears Garmin have had a massive system failure. As the failure appears to impact their entire range, including their aviation navigation devices, experts are speculating they have been hit with a ransomware attack.

As it's unclear when the Garmin site is likely to come back online I'm having to change the device I use to measure sleep.

What I liked about the Garmin Vivofit was it's very low battery use. By using a very basic display, not trying to make the device a smart watch by adding too many features and critically only using BlueTooth connection when manually told to sync, the strap is able to use standard watch batteries which last for months, possibly years. Not sure of exactly how long the batteries last since I've not been using the strap for a year yet. I did put in new batteries when I got the strap. While it had been sitting in a drawer for years the time on the Vivofit was still showing and the step counter worked for a few weeks before finally the battery died. Clearly sitting in a drawer for years doing nothing is going to use less power so that's not a true measure.

In the time old tradition of inheriting gadgets from Jude, I'm trying her Honor Band 5.

I had seen these bands and looking at the specification to price they look amazing and have had good reviews. It does seem that complaints I had read about the device were related to people not configuring it properly or the issues have been addressed in firmware updates since their review.

While the Honor Band 5 app does link with my Google Fit account it's not clear yet if the sleep tracking gets syncronised. I have some research to do.

While Maia also has one of these fitness trackers I haven't seen the results she gets from the app.

With different devices having access to Google fit it's not clear which can read what information and which write what information. This may be something to analyse in another post. 

Tracking What How Where When Why?

Overview

I started my last blog post with a specific point in mind then proceeded to write about something else. What I had intended to cover was this, the information regarding what fitness aspects I'm currently tracking, how I'm tracking each aspect, where the information is being logged, when and why.
I wanted to blog this as recently I'd changed the way I gathered some of the data.

Data Gathering

Weight

Measured every day as I wake up using Renpho BlueTooth scales. The weight is recorded directly to Google Fit and every night a script runs to pull the data from Google Fit and write it into a Google spreadsheet. While the scales also measures body fat this data isn't currently exported from the Renpho application (something to investigate). Weight measurement is also manually entered into the Virgin Pulse fitness application.

Sleep

Measured every night via a Garmin Vivofit. One of the benefits of the Vivofit is that it uses standard watch batteries which allow the device to measure steps and sleep for months without need to charge or change the batteries. As the fitness strap runs on limited power it's functions are also limited, it's a balance of features against battery life. Sleep data is automatically recorded into the Garmin 

Steps

Measured constantly with Garmin Vivofit, backed up with Android step count on either the phone or watch. Step count is recorded in Garmin Connect from the Vivofit, Google Fit for Android steps and then both are recorded in Virgin Pulse. Only cadence is recorded in Strava when activities are started manually.

Workouts

Currently limited to runs and walks, recorded with Strava app either on Wear OS for running or phone for walks. Workout data from Strava automatically populates to Virgin Pulse. This has recently changed as I was manually adding workout data from Strava into Garmin connect, this would then populate Virgin Pulse. With the old method I was getting duplicate workout recordings as the Garmin Vivofit was automatically generating a workout after 15 minutes of what it recognised as "running". I've disabled workout auto detect on the Vivofit, this stops the duplicate recordings. While this does mean that Garmin connect no longer has workouts recorded this information is still held in both Strava and Virgin Pulse. Workouts are also synchronised into Google Fit from Strava.

Distance timings

Times for 400m, 1/2mile, 1km, 1Mile, 2km, 5km, 10km, 15km, 10Miles, half marathon, 30km, marathon and 50km are recorded when a workout is manually triggered in Strava. Once a week I use the web site https://stravabestefforts.com to export all the timings for each workout and record them into a Google spreadsheet. The free account on the web site displays the past 180 days of data. Typically it's only runs which record the times. 

Segment timings

In Strava, repeated runs are broken down into segments and timings for these segments are recorded. With the free version of Strava only a limited record of the recent segment times is displayed. Segment times, while a motivator, are not recorded outside of Strava.

Hardware

TicWatch Pro

This is a watch runs Wear OS. What's unusual is that the watch has a dual screen function in that most of the time the display is monochromatic showing just time, date, step count and battery level, on awakening the watch shows a full colour OLED display.

Renpho ES-20M BlueTooth Scales

These scales measure weight as well as rudimentary body fat via pads on the scale. Once measured the scales store the results and can send them to it's own app on a mobile phone. The Renpho app automatically feeds in to Google Fit. 

Garmin VivoFit

The VivoFit is a sports band which is only able to measure movement so is used to record step counts and sleep. What makes this specific band unusual is that it is powered by standard watch batteries. To minimise the power consumption the band only connects to the phone app when a button is held. The screen is low power LCD and there is no backlight. With a long battery life this is ideal for monitoring 24x7.

Programs

The main tools I'm using are, Google fit, Garmin Connect, Strava and Virgin Pulse.

Mobvoi

The app provided for use with the TicWatch Pro. Rarely touched as the data collected is already reflected in other apps.

Google Fit

Google fit records a lot of information from the phone an Wear OS watch however the data is only visible through the phone app, because of this I tend to use Google Fit as a storage system and as a way to link the other tools.

Garmin Connect

Garmin Connect is the interface for the Vivofit sports band. The site is quite comprehensive with history data, badges, challenges and social interaction. If I were using a Garmin device with more features I'd possibly make more use of the site. Customisation is very good allowing dashboard configuration. Other than the limited information I'm able to provide to the site from the sports band the other reason I'm dialling back my use of the site is that the social media side is not as popular as Strava.

Strava

Strava gathers data via Android and Wear OS apps which measure steps, heart monitor and use GPS data. Strava is very popular and acts as a stand alone social media platform as well as interacting with other platforms. Features such as "kudos" and "fly by" along with challenges between members make the platform very popular. 

Virgin Pulse

Virgin Pulse is a fitness application provided by my work. The system pulls data from Strava, Google Fit and Garmin. Social interaction on Virgin Pulse is limited to within the company I work for but all the same is quite active. The Virgin Pulse program offers benefits for accruing credits which are gained by completing specific tasks. Current tasks that give credits are:

• Create a Personal challenge 5 Credits
• Join personal challenge 5 Credits
• Track 10000 steps 20 days in a month 5 Credits
• Track 7000 steps 20 days in a month 5 Credits
• Track steps or active min 20 days in a month 5 Credits

Google Sheets

While each of the applications has their own levels of history data, graphs and various different ways to show data it's sometimes helpful to have figures in a straight spreadsheet. I have used Google Sheets and the scripting capability within Google Sheet to pull data from Google Fit. Currently I manually add more detail from Strava, this could possibly be automated too at some point. Should one of the systems stop supporting a specific measure there's capability to get that information from another source and still maintain the spreadsheet.

Still Going

I found out last week that the points on my Virgin Active account, which is a fitness tracking system funded from work, pays for points. It's not a hell of a lot and because I wasn't aware of this feature I'd not really put in much effort. I was able to claim £26 for the points I had collected over the past 18 months (?). Coincidentally one of the points earners is to register 20 days in a month of over 10,000 steps, a feat I was just able to make on the last day of May.
First day of June and I'm hopefully switching now to a 5km run every other day, stepping up from the previous 3km, intending to intersperse with 5k walks, aiming again to register 20 days of 10,000 steps, only this way not cutting it so close to the wire.